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POETR V OF REASON AND CONSCIENCE. 

IMMORTALITY 

AND ^A^ORTH OF THE SOUL; 

TEN SCENES IN THE 

LIFE OF A LADY OF FASHION; 

AND 

MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. 



BY 

JAMES B. WALKER, 

Author of " Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation," " Doctrine of the Holy 
Spirit," "Living Questions," etc., etc. 



CHICAGO : 
HENRY A. SUMNER, tig DEARBORN STREET. 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., PHILADELPHIA, PA. 
GOULD & LINCOLN, BOSTON. 
SII£LDON & CO., NEW YORK, 

IS7I. 






fintered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S71, 

BY JAMES B. WALKER, 

In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 




IoSAND 110 DEAKBORN ST., 
CHICAGO. 



PREFACE. 



Charles P. McIlvaine, 

Bishop in Ohio. 

Dear Sir : — There are some readers into whose hand this vol- 
ume may fall whose good opinion I greatly desire to retain — 
yourself among the first in that number. To such I wish to say a 
word or two apologetically. 

There is an aspect of auto-biography and self-presentation in 
some of the minor pieces that is unseemly ; but the pieces were 
first written in letters to friends, or in incidental sketches, and they 
could not be printed at all without presenting them as they were 
written. 

There are likewise some minor pieces, the omission of which 
the proprieties of age would seem to indicate. One of these, at 
least, has been inserted by the request of a friend. And after all, 
is it not due to truth, in some sense, that the varying phases which 
the same mind may take on, under different influences, should be 
exhibited, rather than inhibited? 

As we have met incidentally during life's duties in the West, I 
have had occasion to be grateful for appreciative recognition on 
your part of some portions of my literary labors that had fallen 
under your notice. This was more especially a favor, by introduc- 
ing an American author to persons and places in England to which 
your position in the Church, and your reputation as a scholar, gave 
influential access. 

I am sure you will like the argument on the Immortality and 
Worth OP' THE Soul. With some passages in the second poem 
(if read) you will not be so well pleased. The radical expressions 
in regard to FRATERNITY, EQUALITY, and simplicity in religious 
life, aris.e from a conscientious conviction that the views of the 
Quakers on these subjects — as on that of the Doctrine of the 
Holy Spirit — are in harmony with the teachings of Jesus. 

I trust God will prolong your useful life yet many years. And 
now, having myself ere long to put off the harness, I may say, to 
the praise of God's guiding providence, that if He were to grant 
me another probation on earth, I should desire to be permitted to 
live over again the same life which He has directed thus far — r- 
penitent for imperfections, but changing no important item of life's 
work. 

Very respectfully. 

Your fellow servant, 

James B. Walker. 

Benzonia, Mich., 1871. 




DEDICATORY LETTER. 



London, July 4, 1862. 
To Mrs. Bessie Englis : 

My Good Friend: Allow me to dedicate, with the kind- 
est regards, this volume of MS. Poetry to you. It is a 
Home Book of Poetry. The longest pieces were written 
in hours of leisure to produce moral impression on sub- 
jects deemed of importance. Some of the shorter ones 
are memorials of affection or bereavement — others express 
the thought awakened by the incidents to which they refer. 
I have retained the prose introductions. Written at the 
time for the eye of friends only, they ask from the reader a 
friendly recognition. They will not have the interest for 
others that they have for us ; but if I should omit them, 
it would not be our Home Book of Poetry. I am glad you 
think favorably of my request to edit and publish such 
parts of the MSS. as your judgment may approve. It has 
been very pleasant for me to find a lady in London who 
has studied American Poetry, — not even overlooking the 
"Poets and Poetry of the West." And now — hastened 
home by the unhappy state of my country — (a state of 
things deplorable in the present, but which, in the issue, 
will extend the area of civilization, and promote moral 
progress in America) it is pleasant for me to leave the 
product of my leisure hours in the hands of one who can 



6 DEDICATORY LETTER. 

introduce them to the pubhc more acceptably than I could 
myself have done. 

Allow me to say a word in regard to the impulse which 
occasioned some of the pieces, and the peculiarities which 
characterize others : 

The poem on the "Immortality and Worth of the Soul" 
I designed to publish some years ago. Not so much 
because I thought it valuable for its poetical qualities, but 
because we have nothing in our language, nor in any lan- 
guage, that exhausts the product of the human reason on 
this subject ; and because the worth of the soul is neither 
rightly apprehended nor sufficiently considered, by many 
who professedly beheve in Immortality. 

I was surprised to find how little the Moderns have 
added to the thought of the Ancients on the subject of 
Immortality ; and in regard to the Worth of the Soul, 
although much has been written from the Scriptural view 
of the subject, yet, as deduced from its capabilities and 
capacities, the Ancients have written scarcely anything, 
and the Moderns nothing of much value. 

The Poem is an Argument. All that I deemed valuable 
in my studies of ancient and modern thought on this sub- 
ject, I have combined with additional views of my own, 
and accumulated the strength of the whole to sustain the 
desired conclusion. 

One of the ablest arguments against the Immortality of 
the Soul was written in Latin verse by Lucrecius. Pope's 
Essay is Reason in Rhyme. These may be apologies for 
the present endeavor. 

One of the last treatises which the eminent statesman 
and patriot, John Ouincy Adams read, was this poem on 
the Immortality and Worth of the Soul. A friend of the 
author, Hon. J. Brinkerhoff, loaned it to him in MS., and 
asked his attention to it as a subject upon which he had 
bestowed much thought. He returned it with an accom- 
panying verse, which was, in all probability, his last written 
expression upon any sacred subject. I have appended it 
at the close of the Canto on Immortality. It is a strong 



DEDICATORY LETTER. *J 

testimony from one of the best minds of the age, that the 
concluding passages of the first book express the result to 
which the most profound thought on this subject must lead 
the inquirer, viz. : Faith in Christ gives the only satisfactory 
evidence of immortality, and that evidence is possessed 
only by the believer in Christ. 

The qualities of reason and conscience do not predomi- 
nate in the Poetry of our time. A book without a conscience 
is a malignant power, as much as a man without a con- 
science. No tnind is noble but the conscience crowned* Yet 
I would not, as you know, have all Poetry religious, or 
even serious. Mirth is as valuable in its place as morals. 

But while Poetry that does not recognize the moral senti- 
ments may not be the offspring of a corrupt imagination, 
still it gives no impulse to the nobler and better propensions 
of the soul. There is poetry of mere fancy, which, like 
Longfellow's Hiawatha, and Tennyson's Idyl, have value, 
as mental entertainment and recreation, for a majority of 
readers. But the first criticisms of Hiawatha evinced that 
there are minds of the highest order that demand the true 
and the good as well as the beautiful in poetry. This class 
may be the smaller one, but in the estimate of God and the 
holy angels, it is the better one. To this class your name 
will commend this little volume, and the readers will, I 
trust, receive impressions that will strengthen their convic- 
tions of immortality and duty, and thus confer upon them 
a blessing in the Present and in the Time to Come. 

In association with the Friend Quakers of England, I 
spent the most profitable hours that I spent in Europe. I 
could sympathize and co-operate with the reform efforts of 
your people more fully than with any class that I met while 
abroad. If there be any people to which the poetry of 
Reason and Conscience will be acceptable, it will be the 
Friends, and others who, like them, believe that the ex- 
hilaration of the imagination, by exaggerated or venal crea- 
tions of the Fancy, is as injurious to the moral nature as 
the stimulus of opium or alcohol is to the intellect. 

* See Chalmers' Bridgewater Treatise. 



8 DEDICATORY LETTER. 

If this little volume shall do anything, even in a limited 
circle, to counteract the effect of dissipating and corrupting 
literature, with which the press is flooding the Old World 
and the New, it will not have been written in vain. 

Very truly, J. B. W. 

117 Fortius Road, Paduington. 

P.S. — The MSS. of the succeeding poems were left in 
the hands of a friend to be published in London, as the 
preceding prose works of the author had been. The first 
years of our civil war entirely suspended the issue of Ameri- 
can books ; and the publishers deemed it best for all parties 
to return the MSS. A part of the manuscript is now offered 
doubtingly to American readers. It would certainly have 
found at least a limited circle of appreciative readers over 
the sea. What the result of the venture will be at home, 
remains to be seen. 

The sketches of incidents connected with the poems are 
retained, for the sake of the few rather than the many. 
They are photographs of heart and home that will be ap- 
preciated by those for whom they were written. 




THE SOUL. 



CANTO FIRST. 



OF IMMORTALITY. 



Mysterious being, where and what art thou 
Matter or motion? ' How dost thou exist? 
Dost thou exist at all, save as a quality, 
Or a result of nature's operations? 
May mortals know aught of thy nature, 
Or thine attributes? Can reason's power, 
By an analysis, reaching the deep profound 
Of nature's heart, learn ought of thee? 



With brow uplifted and with thought-lit eye, 
Thus queried Plato,^ when he sought to solve 
The mystery of his being. A voice canie up 
From the recesses of his inner life — 
Go search; — To the sincere and yearning heart, 
I* 



lO THE SOUL. 

That seeks to know, with holy purposes, 
A light springs up in darkness; Nature feels 
The yearnings of her child, and oft reveals 
Her jewel secrets — holy things, conceal'd 
In the arcana of her heart of hearts. 

Then kindled in his eye a brighter light; 
A mark of urgent thought came over his face ; 
With emphasis of deep resolve, he said: 
Vital intelligence, I will seek for thee; 
He said, — then, with far-reaching intellect, 
He sought through nature for analogies ; 
He asked from science facts ; and searching deep 
For a self-moving ego in the mind, 
He carried on the anxious inquiry, 
Where is the spirit? What the human soul? 

He found in matter various elements,^ 
Essential, simple, uncompound; 
Which held in various combinations form 
Tlie masses of creation. That these resolved. 
May change their form, but not their nature change, 
Npr can they lose their being. He learn'd the truth, 
Whate'er is simple is immutable; 
And what immutable, eternal is — 
That every thing's eternal, save the forms 
Of physical creation, and of life. 



OF IMMORTALITY. II 

Then rose the vital inquiry, which erst 
Was hallowed by the wisdom of the Greeks : 
Has spirit immortality ? or, is thought 
And consciousness an effluence conjoined 
With modes of matter ; as the melody 
Of the soft wind harp, when y^olus comes, 
And with his "airy fingers " strikes the chords? 
Or as some subtle influence, produced 
By operations of material things, 
Such as engenders the magnetic spark, 
Or turns the quivering needle to the pole ? 

Call, if you please, " the brain a battery " 
Producing thought as the voltaic pile 
Does the magnetic spark. Then answer me: 
What stands behind the battery, and directs 
The spark to ends selected and designed ? 
Dost thou say this, " As the electric fire 
Leaps by a law of nature to the point 
Of negative affinity — or as the beast 
Pressed by the claims of hunger, or induced 
By sight of vegetation, seeks his food, 
So thought in man exists by things within 
Or things without, that act upon the brain : 
'Tis thus impelling motive, not design, 
Directs the thought." Then answer me, what is 't 
That, standing o'er the battery in the brain, 



12 THE SOUL. 

Controls the action — contravenes the laws 
That govern matter — turns the spark of thought 
To other ends than nature's law would gain? 
What agent can arrest the fire-winged bolt 
From Heaven's battery in the thunder cloud ; 
And by tuition, discipline, or power 
Controls the " instinct-battery " in the brute. 
And thus appropriate by sovereign power 
Brute faculties and instincts to its use? 
Nature obeys affinities and lavt^s. 
But if by these the human spirit thinks. 
What is it abrogates, avoids, directs 
Instincts and laws, which nature has ordained, 
And thus controls the cause — averts the effect 
Which natural law and life would consummate? 
Is this the soul? 

Does matter think? Is thought a quality 
Sublim'd in the alembic of the brain ? 
Then answer me philosophy. Thou sayest 
That matter changes its identity. 
Throughout the whole economy of man, 
Often in a short life. Why is it, then, 
That personal identity — the I 
Of consciousness — remains and lives? 
If personality inheres, as said. 
In matter as a quality — why, then. 



OF IMMORTALITY. 1 3 

With matter not removed. The subject gone, 

The quality should cease. But 'tis not so: 

The brain may often change, with all that makes 

Material conformation in the man ; ^ 

Yet something lives, that stretches over all, 

Above these changes — claims identity. 

And feels responsible for actions wrought 

Through its oft-changing instrument, the brain. 

Is this the soul? 

Say'st thou that thought, as a resultant, springs 
From man's organization ? Tell me, then, 
What is the agent when the suicide 
At his own organism aims the blow?* 
Did nature murder nature then? or thus: 
Th' effect destroy its own efficient cause — 
The body kill the body. Say'st thou so? 
Not by some law or agent intervened. 
But by an act prepense, with end in view, 
Matter is shivered by designing mind — 
What is it, then, which thus delib'rately 
Destroys the instrument through which it acts? 
Is it the soul? 

Philosophy has not revealed the truth, '' 
When mere conception or the goings on 
Of the perceptive or reflective powers 



H 



THE SOUL. 



Are deemed the highest elements of mind; 
'Tis so in brutes, but 'tis not so in men : — 
There is a conscious agent, which surveys 
Thoughts as they rise, and marks their character — 
'Tis not, as men say, "consciousness of thought"; 
But 'tis a conscious agent, which perceives, 
Judges, discriminates, approves, condemns 
The character and qualities of thought; 
Something that looks at thought. 
Yet 'tis not thought itself. Thought is its object; 
Judging is its act. Itself the conscious Ego, 
Recognizing thought, as emanations 
From itself drawn forth by various causes; 
But yet reproved, approved, or modified 
By th' moral conscious agent in the mind. 
Is this the soul? 

Say'st thou external things, as motive powers. 
Control the will and move the sense in man.'' * 
'Tis true in part. Man's nature is allied 
To earthly objects ; these affect the will. 
And wake the sensibility to life; 

And were there naught but consciousness of thought, 
Man, as the brutes, were bound in iron chains, 
Instinct and motive governing his life — 
But 'tis not so. Self-consciousness declares, 
Not only that these motives influence 



OF IMMORTALITY. I5 

Man's sensuous nature, and invite his will, 

But testifies that back of will there stands 

An agent which reflects, appreciates, 

Inquires for the ulterior influence 

On ME and mine. Or, if benevolence 

Has modified the nature of the I 

Of consciousness, that agent asks itself 

What influence will willing thus produce 

Upon the moral interests of men. 

In every human soul a voice affirms 

The solemn truth that something in the mind 

Perceives the influence impress'd on will, 

And in abeyance holds the motive power, 

Until it scans the cause and consequence; 

Or marshals other reasons, and thus weighs 

Interest and influence, probabilities; 

And then, in view of self-conviction, acts 

For self or God — as self-reflection prompts. 

This truth, affirmed by all men's consciousness, 

And seen in all men's actions, testifies 

To a self-7noving^ self -determining cause, 

Producing will by its own energy, 

In view of its relations to the world — 

To self — to God — time, and eternity — 

Is this the soul? 



1 6 THE SOUL. 

Say'st thou, as human organism fails, 
The mental powers decay. * So men have said 
With those consenting who have sought to prove 
The spirit's immortality. Suppose it true, 
That age enfeebles human intellect, 
Still the high moral powers that link 
The mortal to the immortal life fail not — 
(At least fail not where faith in Christ exists) 
As age comes on, and Time with chilly touch 
Blanches the cheek and cools the ardent pulse ; 
As body, intellect, and memory fail, 
Conscience grows strong, the power of love augments ; 
When mind and matter, palsied by old age. 
Crumble to ruins round his moral life, 
The Christian's conscience and affections live. 

Hast thou not heaixl of those, who, as they stood 
With trembling frame and waning intellect, 
Upon the confines of their mortal life. 
Have there exhibited, with angel's strength, 
The power of conscience and of charity — 
As tho' the mind had waned to consciousness. 
And consciousness all heart and conscience grew. 
Is this the soul? 

But then, 'tis said, all claimed as soul in man 
The animals possess. " 'Tis not all true. 



OF IMMORTALITY. I^ 

Admit it true, some creatures are endowed 
With minor intellect. Then all is said 
That truth or true philosophy can claim : — 
Yet over these the human spirit stands 
Towering in majesty — the free-born soul 
Endowed with reason's higher, holier powers — 
These stand apart, perceive the influence 
Of sense upon the sensuous mind — 
Consent, dissent, and feel responsible, 
As powers above to guide the powers below ; — 
A wheel within a wheel — the center point 
The I of consciousness. — Is this the soul? 

Dost thou claim more than this — say, if thou wilt. 
The creature has a conscience — that it can 
Perceive and feel the duties due to man; 
What does it argue — this, that man's its God ; 
Its highest end to do his earthl}' will ; 
Its highest knowledge — knowledge of his mind : 
But man has powers that reach the Infinite; 
His conscience feels the obligation due 
To his Creator. His higher reason scans 
The moral law. His free soul bows to God ; 
And his affections, kindled by the love 
Outflowing from God manifest in Christ, 
Are during as the cause which gives them birth — 
Thus creature souls were made for man, their lord — 



iS THE SOUL. 

He being earthly, these are earthly too — 
But man 's for God who, living evcrmofe. 
With everlasting life endows the soul. 

Mark further the developments induced 
By man in creature natures. He may raise 
One beast above his unsubdued mate, 
And elevate its faculties beyond 
The highest point they possibly could gain 
By all the instincts common to its kind: 
So God and man. The human soul may grow 
To a development of moral power. 
By the tuition of the mind of Christ, 
Wliich far transcends the attainments possible 
For man to gain by merely human means. 
What does this argue .f* May we not infer 
The end of creature minds is found in man. 
But Human souls were formed to live for Him 
Who disciplines and sanctifies their powers.? 
See yonder mastiff, as with eye dilate 
He scans his master's featui-es — thus to catch 
The impression of his spirit on his face — 
Now he bounds — but doubtful — he looks back 
To settle the conviction in his mind, 
That he has rightly caught his master's will — 
That creature has sagacity and strength 
Of intellect, which far exceeds the range 



OF IMMORTALITY. 1 9 

His nature could attain in primal state; 
And when thus fitted to his master's will, 
Does it not follow that brave RoUa finds 
A home within the mansion, and exerts 
His active limbs and cultivated powers 
In duties which his ti-aining indicates? 
Then, is not the probation which we feel 
Trying and forming human character; 
(If discipline has qualified for heaven;) 
Substantial evidence the good shall stand 
Before the glorious Saviour, and employ 
Their cultivated and ennobled powers 
In holy worship and high ministry 
In the bright spirit world of God our King? 
Rejoice ?ny soul! 

Tlie Maker has so framed the animal 
That all their wants and ends are met on earth; 
There's not a want or instinct creatures know. 
But may be satisfied by earthly good. — 
Not so with man — his sensuous appetites 
Seek earthly good, and things of earth may fill 
These to satiety: — yet in his inner life 
Desires arise that seek a higher end — 
The heart and conscience ask for joy, and peace. 
And living love, which earth can never give : 
And when fools think, by earthly means or ends, 



20 THE SOUL. 

To satisfy the cravings of the soul, 
They find it vain. — 'Tis as a poison'd spring, 
Where thirsty ti'avelers may stop to drink, 
And drinking more, the more they are athirst • 
Or as the mirage of the desert sands, 
Flattering the hope — eluding the pursuit: 
Thus efforts to allay the spirit's wants 
By earthly good, increase the appetite; 
Attempts to satisfy increase the thirst: 
The spirit spurns the earth, as her chief end, 
As the king eagle spurns the food for worms. 
Now, if there be no future life for man, 
Then has the Maker satisfied the brute. 
By filling his capacities — While man. 
The monarch. He has placed on earth, 
To yearn unsatisfied, and die unblest! 
We dare not reason thus, for God is just 
To meet the aptitudes which He creates. 
What is it then that yearns for greater good. 
And higher life, than earthly things bestow ? 
Is it the soul? 

That which belongs to nature, as a pai't 
Of her constituents, is from the Lord ; *^ 
The animal has instincts which belong 
To all his class — God-given instincts 
Which direct its nature to its end. 



OF IMMORTALITY. 21 

Go mark the insect destined to arise 

From the low earth- w^orm to the butterfly; 

God gave that insect instinct to prepare, 

And God vouchsafes the end wliich instinct seeks. 

'Tis so witli man — deep in his inner life, 

A witness stands in presence of the soul, 

And says, in contemplation's solemn hour, 

You can not die ! 'Tis well to be prepared 

To live the ages of eternal years ; 

And wheresoever man is found, as man, 

He hears that inward voice, which bids him seek 

Fitness for life ensuing after death ; 

— 'Tis true his erring intellect has planned 

Myriads of methods to attain tlie end: 

This only argues, method is from man ; 

While that instinctive principle, inwrought 

Into the texture of the human soul 

Which moves all races to anticipate. 

And seek, by various methods, to secure 

A better life hereafter, is from God. 

And oft, when men heed not the instinctive call. 

Until the solemn hour, when death draws near, 

With arm uprais'd, in attitude to dip 

His shaft into their bosom — then it is 

This voice shrieks out within the soul, 

Upbraiding the neglect, which during life. 

Was paid to its monitions — when it said, 



22 THE SOUL. 

" Toil can not die! 'Tis well to be prepared! 

To live the ages of eternal years! " 

— Now, who shall say that God, the just and good, 

Who gave true instincts to the insect tribes, 

Has placed a lying witness in man's soul ! 

'Twere blasphemy, because you thus impeach 

The probity of the Eternal Mind : 

Then answer me — what hears that inward voice ? 

What sees that monitor along its path, 

Stand with a shadowy finger, pointing on 

To great eternity? Is this the soul? 

Another step. In insects may be seen 
Germs of another life.'* The skilful hand 
In anatomic science can lay bare, 
Within the earthborn caterpillar's breast, 
The lineaments which indicate and mai k 
The form and features of the butterfly : 
'Tis so in all regenerated minds; 
A spiritual analysis will find 
Germs of a life to come. The lineaments 
Of life developing within our life. 
Thus in the soul is formed an appetite 
Which lives on truth, as spiritual food ; 
A love of things above — an ear to hear 
The voice of God. A nature all alive 
To motives above earth, and time, and sense — 



OF IMMORTALITY. 23 

New aims, new hopes, new fears. The soul's trans- 
formed, 
As in a chrysalis. Its love, supreme, 
Detached from earth, seeks its chief good above. 
Now, who shall say these germs shall ne'er expand — 
That the angel thus in embryo shall not drop 
Its earthborn vestments, and on wings of light, 
Cleave the cerulean of eternal day — 
A ransomed soul! 

The nature of the spirit, in Itself, 
Claims an allegiance with the angel world : '* 
It finds its being's end — its highest good, 
In spiritual action, which depends 
Not on its corporeity. Peace, love, and joy 
Are its essential life — the aim and end 
Which the Eternal One, who made the soul, 
Impressed upon its nature. Mere earthly good, 
Sought as an end, prevents development 
Of the angelic life within the heart ; 
Joyful obedience — contrite love of God, 
And childlike trust, are heaven to the soul. 
Now mark the thought, and weigh the argument — 
The soul's best good consists In holiness, 
An end induced by objects not of earth, 
But glorious objects of the life to come ; 
The same which actuate an angel's mind, 



24 THE SOUL. 

And fills their nature with eternal love : 
Then shall the being, to whom God has given 
The constitution of angelic life, 
Perish upon the threshold of that state 
To which its heaven-born adaptations lead ? 
Reason and righteousness forbid the thought, 
And join their voice f announce the glorious truth, 
Death's shaft kills not the spirit — but sets free 
The deathless soul! 

The human spirit has a power to know, 
Arising from the basis of the known, 
And stretching on forever.'* Each new truth 
The spirit aggregates, increases strengdi 
To gather other truths. And as the soul 
Rises the mount of knowledge, its survey 
Farther extends into the limitless. 
Each truth has its affinities; and as 
The store increases in the human mind, 
The power increases, by which mind is drawn 
Upward and onward to the Infinite. 
This is the soul's prerogative ; — a gift 
Which separates it from inferior things: 
Capacity to know, and to increase 
Its knowledge endlessly from what is known, 
Is an endowment of eternal mind ; — 
It is an angel's nature, and allies 



OF IMMORTALITY. 25 

The human spirit to the glorious God. — 

— How blest 'twill be to climb the heavenly hills 

Of spiritual knowledge, and survey 

The glories of God's character and works! 

And as the spirit stands on those high mounts 

Of vision, and perceives the goings on 

Of varied systems, each dem6nstrating 

The power and wisdom of the Good Supreme — 

And as it ever rises and looks on 

The evolution of the mighty plans 

Which God In infinite benevolence form'd 

To manifest His glory, and to lead 

Created spirits to the fount of life: 

As such impressions of Its Father's power, 

Its Father's wisdom, and its Father's love, 

Come to the spirit's reason, how it will 

Exult in knowledge high and Infinite — 

Gather Its starry wings about Its face. 

And worship in the deepest reverence 

A reasoning soul. 

Most men are fools enough to believe in dreams, " 
But wise enough to keep their Inward faith 
A secret from each other. Wise men have thought 
That indications of events to come 
Their shadowy impress make upon the mind 
In hours of sleep. So thought the dying Cyrus — 
2 - 



26 THE SOUL. 

So have thought men of all ages, climes, and creeds - 

But if, when sleep has partially set free 

The soul from its material tenement, 

It catches glimpses of the unborn things 

Which lie within the future — or, if spirits then 

Can reach the mind, revealing things unknown : * 

Does it not argue, when our time shall come 

To drop this corporeity, the soul, 

That erst by hidden cord of life was tied 

To its dull prison, shall expatiate, 

A free-winged spirit; — one whose mind shall know 

Present and future; and commune with those 

Who, hov'ring round its pillow on the earth, 

Suggested shadows of events to come 

Unto the soul. 

Seme men maintain a double life on earth ; 
The outward seeming, and the inward truth " — 
Their public life enacted for the world. 
Their hidden life known but to self and God : 
And Satan, in the vestments of a saint. 
Does not belie his nature more than does 
The assumed complexion of men's life ofttimes 

* " As the ^ood angels in some brisjhter dreams 
Call to the soul when man doth sleep, 
So some straiii^e thouifhts transcend our wonted themes, 
And unto gloi-y peep." — Vaughan. 



OF IMMORTALITY. 2/ 

Belie the inward life of consciousness; 

Without they seem the friend of God and men, 

And gain on earth rewards as tho' they were ; 

While heaven knows that their whole life's a fraud; 

That self, and lust, and pride control the will : — 

Can God exist, and be a righteous Judge, 

If such a wretch who lives a lying life, 

And gains, from men deceived, the high award 

Of truth and virtue, does not live again 

To reap his just demerits ? — and to be 

A danijied soul? 

* * Behold, he comes. 
The conquering hero, and the loud huzzas 
Of servile natures make the welkm ring 
In praise of his achievements. See the smile 
Of gi'atified ambition, and of pride. 
Flits o'er his features, as from balconies 
And open windows, smiling women wave 
The snowy 'kerchief, honoring his deeds — 
All eyes seek for his form — all tongues 
Speak of his merits in the ears of all : 
Power, reward, and human praise are his — * * 
* * Now change the scene. — Notice yon soldier lie 
Qiiivering with pain. The fractured limb — the scar 
Upon his torn and bleeding flesh, dart agony. — 
See now! — he drags himself along the ground, 



28 THE SOUL. 

And begs for water — begs the boon of death, 

From tortur'd wretches, mangled Hke himself. 

That youth was brave — he sought his country's good. 

And put his life in peril to defend 

That country's rights. For these he bled and died : — 

No glory his, nor honor, — nay, his name 

Marked not the records of the victory 

He died to win. His chief has triumph'd 

In whose inmost soul ranked ambition foul; 

Aggrandizement of self, cost what it might 

Of abject misery, tears, or human blood — 

But victory gained, — the popular acclaim 

Reward and honor him. While heaven sees 

The motives which controlled the chieftain's life 

Were motives which a demon could approve. 

Compar'd with him, that soldier was a saint; 

Compar'd with his, his patriotism pure ; 

Yet yonder chief has quaffed the meed of praise, 

Retired in ease, to live in luxury. 

While the praiseworthy drank oblivion ! 

Will God reverse this judgment, or shall guilt 
Reap the reward of virtue? Unless the soul 
Lives in a future life, where the awards 
Of time are rectified, that wretch has gain'd 
Tiic meed of virtue due the virtuous, brave. 
If earth - life is our aU., God is not just ^ 



OF IMMORTALITY. 29 

Mark yonder demagogue — his speech sets forth 
The dangers of the people. He's the friend 
Of the hard-handed yeoman of tlie land — 
Sees all the interests of the country lie 
In measures of his party ; and would die 
To serve his dear constituents. That man has gain'd 
A place of honor and emolument ; 
Men call him patriot, and he is hailed 
As a true champion of his country's rights: 
And yet his heart is foul with selfishness — 
He 'd sell the vital interests of the State 
To advance a selfish or a party end. 
The measures he denounces as the bane 
Of the Republic, he would glorify 
As the Republic's hope, were they proposed 
By his coadjutors. Party and self 
Are motive, aim, and object of his life — 
The just, the right, God and his country's good 
Ai-e secondary motives in his mind; 
And yet he gets all good that earth can give 
For aims and motives which he never knew; 
While those who truly seek their country's good 
Meet base hostility or cold neglect. 
If earth is all of life — then life's a lie; 
If earth 's unjust and impious awards 
Meet no reversal from the Judge Supreme, 
Alas my soul I 



30 



THE SOUL. 



If earth is all of life — if God is just, 
Why is it that all consequence of guilt 
Falls not upon the guilty ; but ofttimes 
Falls heavily on those whose souls are free 
From the iniquity which brings the curse? 
Mark that impersonation of all sin, 
Nero, of Rome, and see his virtuous wife 
Driven to exile by the wretch's lust ; 
And after years of suffering, she falls 
Bearing the consequence of Nero's sin — 
The guileless victim of a demon's crimes. 

Rome is in ashes; and the tyrant brings 
His guilt upon the Christians. And, O God! 
What fearful tortures do the guiltless bear 
For that fell tyrant's wrong. Meanwhile the wretch 
Exults in torture, feeds upon the groans 
Of mui"dered martyrs, doomed to die for crimes 
Conceived in the deep hell of his own heart: 
Now, if there be no other life but this. 
The consequence of one man's guilt should not 
Fall on another. If Justice rules the world, 
Then sin should only curse the sinning soul. 
But men grow old in sin, and guiltless hearts 
Are crucified on earth for guilty acts 
Which others perpetrate. Can God be just, 
If there's no judgment in another life 



OF IMMORTALITY. 3 1 

To damn the guilty, vindicate tlie good, 
And grant award, as love and truth require, 
To every soul? 

The blind can see, the consequence of guilt 
Falls often on the guiltless ; and that vice 
Oft reaps rewards of virtue in the earth. 
If there be no hereafter, who dare call 
Justice and power attributes of God! 
But reason vindicates the Eternal Name 
From allegations that affright the just, 
And calls the drama of the present life 
But the brief prelude of a future state. 
Where God is justified, and spirits judged, 
And life or death awarded to the soul. 

The sense of immortality itself 
Is life and power in believing minds: 
It is an instinct in the spirit's heart 
That leads it upward to its highest end. 

Behold yon abject wretch whose soul has lost 
The sense of life to come! Behold him sink 
Down from the dignity of human life 
To mingle with the brutes that lift no thought 
Above the earth; and having lost the sense 
Of immortality his manhood 's lost. 



32 THE SOUL. 

But see his fellow-man, who lives in view 

Of life beyond tlie grave. This hope has power 

To elevate the soul from low pursuits, 

And lead men upward on the scale of life, 

Into a culture that approximates 

The sphere of higher minds and holier hearts. 

Would God advance our nature by a lie ? 
Would He implant convictions that can lead 
Man to his highest dignity by thoughts 
That guide — that elevate the aim, while yet 
That guiding thought is false? No; God is true, 
And those immortal hopes which bless the soul 
By the prevision of a life to come 
Are given by heaven to elevate its aim 
And fit it for the skies. 

Thus reason wandered down the " Course of 
Time," 
And sought the sources of the elder thought, 
And weighed the tiaith which nature since reveal'd 
Unto the moderns — adding yet to these 
An agonising effort to espy 
Yet something more in matter or in mind 
To give an evidence on which to rest 
The hope of immortality. But still, 
Reason unsatisfied, with faltering wing, 



OF IMMORTALITY. 33 

Droops down again to earth, and feels 

Her yearning efforts have not gained a full — 

A conscious sense of immortality. 

O Son of God, 
Author of Hope, of Love, of Life Divine 
In human hearts: Thou art the Way — 
The Truth — the Life. — Divine, Eternal Life 
Is draw^n from Thee. The bond of faith 
That binds my life to thine assui"es the soul 
That it can never die ; For Thou dost live. 

But wanting faith, may not the second death, 
Deep and profound, as of nonentity, 
A death to Life — a death to Love — to God ; 
A death of natural immortality 
Await the earth-boiTi mind.'" O blessed Christ, 
From whom faith draws Eternal Life — my soul 
Doth cling to Thee. Thy Spirit in my heart 
Sayeth that Thou hast love and power divine, 
And wilt not let me die! Thou wilt not leave 
My soul in Hades, nor my sleeping dust 
A nonent in the grave. This is my hope. 

Amen.' 



34 THE SOUL. 

The following heart-utterance of one of the most eminent 
statesmen of the past age, should be thoughtfully considered 
by thosa unhappy minds who are involved in the doubt so 
ably wrought out by the liberal Mr. Alger. Alger " brings 
life and immortality to " dafkness. Adams had felt a sim- 
ilar doubt — but his last thought is of the Gospel and of 
Christ. 

LINES WRITTEN BY JOHN OUINCY ADAMS, 

On reading in MS. the Canto on Immortality — the hist thouglit ever writ* 
ten by tlie sage on a sacred subject. 

Matter and mind ! mysterious One, 

Is man through three-score years and ten : 

Where ? when the thread of life was spun ; 
Where ? when reduced to dust again. 

All seeing God, the doubt suppress, 
The doubt Thou only canst relieve ; 

Let me, to solace my distress. 
Fly to thy Gospel and believe. 




ARGUMENT TO CANTO SECOND. 



The Immortality of the soul being assumed, as argued in 
the First Book — in the Second Book its worth is derived 
from an examination of its moral constitution. Theological 
opinions upon the subject are not discussed. The only- 
philosophical method by which to ascertain the value of 
any being (using this word in the largest sense) is to inquire 
what are its qualities, powers, capacities. We inquire, then, 
in the book before us — What may the soul suffer, or 

enjoy, from the exercise of its own faculties ? 

What may it accomplish, of good or evil? — What 
MAY IT become ? By this investigation the conclusion is 
reached that unless God annihilate the Soul of Man, hap- 
piness or misery — spiritual life or death, must be the result 
of its own exercises. What the intensity of future joy, or 
woe will be, must depend on the moral history and moral 
character of each individual spirit. But allowing conscious- 
ness and constitution to continue, the final issue wrought 
out by the soul's activity will be a character fixed either in 
spiritual good or evil. 




WORTH OF THE SOUL. 



CANTO SECOND. 

Sph'it thou art immortal! Who can tell 
The import of the words, undyitig life? 
And what that import leani'd by good or ill 
Experienced thro' ages without end ? 

To know the spirit's value, is to learn 
Its moral powers and capacities. — 
For these interrogate its inner life, 
And learn what it may sufl:cr, be or do; 
And thus from its own nature learn its worth. * 



What language can approximate the truth? 
Not the faint emblem of the passing bird 
Bearing the grain of earth, once in an age, 
To distant planet, 'till the whole were gone, — 
Such emblems weary reason. Egypt's priests, 



38 THE SOUL. 

In th' morning of earth's history, had learn'd 
Eternity's true symbol. ^ The Great I AM 
Has built the universe upon the plan 
Of an eternity. The shining globes 
That nightly roll their circles in the sky, 
Are emblems of a movement without end — 
Hail to thee! sj-mbols of eternal life — 
Ye circling orbs that track, the fields of space. 
Whose end and whose beginning is the same — 
Circles enlink'd with circles endlessly! 
'Far-swinging pendulums, hung in the sky 
To strike the ages of eternity! 
Thy music and thy movement usher'd in 
The morning of the Great Eternal day ; 
And when high noon shall come upon thy disk, 
Time's finger only circleth to the place 
Of the beginning! 

Within the soul itself, and separate 
From sense and its material tenement, 
Deep in its spiritual nature, lie 
The gei-ms of destiny. To live — to act — 
Is to develope fruit of life or death — 
The life to God, is heaven — to self, is hell. ^ 

Mark the capacity to suffer woe, 
In the soul's nature, from the exercise 



WORTH OF THE SOUL. 39 

Of the malignant passions. — Envy, strife, 

Ambition, hatred, cherish'd in the heart. 

Turn th' milk of human kindness into gall, 

And kindle in the soul the flames of hell. — 

The very good w^hich God bestows on some. 

Is food for misery in malignant minds — 

Thus sood becomes their evil!* and the soul 

Is damn'd unless redeem'd from its own consciousness. 

— To hate an enemy e'en brings unrest ; 

But when dire enmity and selfish will 

Rule in the mind, to live is to be curs'd. 

But in the converse, — purest blessedness, 
The soul may know from the sweet exercise 
Of faith that works by love, and casts out fear, 
Inducing peace, benevolence, and joy. 
When reason and the conscience acquiesce. 
To love is to be blest. For " God is love, 
"And he that loveth dwells in God, and God in him" — 
And every mercy which kind heaven bestows 
Upon himself, or others, is a source 
Of grateful joy. T/nis good becomes his life!' 
And good to others, is new joy to him : — 
God ever doeth good ; so holy minds 
Will find the source of everduring life 
Rise from the nature and the love of God : — ■ 
So shall the sanctified from God's own heart 
Draw life and love and peace forever more. 



40 THE SOUL. 

Hope is the life-spring in the human soul 
Imparting' ease to action, giving strengtii 
To bear all present ills, in view of good 
Seen as the rainbow, through affliction's tears.* 
But hope destroyed, and then the spirit lies 
Stricken and withered, agonised and lost: 
As when a vessel, beaten by the storm, 
Lies wrecked, and lab' ring on the surging sea* 
While hope of safety or of succor lives. 
Landsmen and seamen act with energy; 
And e'en frail women have a power to do. 
Sustained by hope. But hark! she founders! 
And the captain's voice, firm until now, 
Proclaims the words of doom " Great God ! we 're lost! ' 
With that word, Hope expired, and effort ceas'd ; 
And a loud cry of anguish — piercing — wild. 
Rose from the ship, and mingling with the wail 
Of the storm furies, drifted o'er the sea! 

— So God has made the sj^irit — Hope may die ; 
And if we pass the bound where man can make 
A sure friend of the Future — Hope must die. 
And from her ashes will spring up despair — 
The worm that never dies. To ev^er}^ soul 
Despair comes in when hope goes out, as sure 
As putrefaction follows loss of life : 

— When hope is lost, who shall deliver us 
From the dread body of this mental death. 



WORTH OF THE SOUL. 4I 

Within the soul itself, and consequent 
On the free action of the moral powers, 
The conscience lives, and, armed with a whip 
Of scorpions, it assmls unpardoned souls/ 
'Tis consciousness of an All-Seeing Eye 
That gives dire power to conscience : 
Man may exclude the God-sense from his mind 
By sin or atheism, or unbelief, 

And thus escape remorse for wrong. But God and sin 
Can not be present in the soul at once 
And conscience sleep. And souls can not escape 
Forever from God's eye. Infinite space 
Is the sensorium of the Deity, — 
And eveiy movement which a spirit makes 
Begets perception in the Eternal Mind, 
And an Omniscient Deity begets 
Perception of Himself, in every soul 
When disembodied, in his vast domain. 
And who can tell that secret of lost souls, 
The deep remorse the guilty must endure, 
By cognizance of God, in sinful minds. 
To the pure mind a sense of the present God 
Will be as sun-rays to the healthful eye, 
Filling the soul with light and holiness. 
But that same sun-ray, to th' impure in heart, 
Is like the light upon an eye diseased. 
That stings and burns as with a point of flame. 



42 THE SOUL. 

In the resources of God's universe 
There is one only sovereign remedy 
That saves a free-will sinner from remorse : 
A SENSE OF PARDON, wrought by faith in Christ, 
Speaks peace to conscience, and extracts its sting. 
The soul may then see God ; but w^anting this, 
It must from its own nature, be self-stung 
By fell remorse — the " worm that never dies ! " 

Pardon or penalty all souls must know ; 
For if the " second death " does not annihilate, 
When the death-angel looks upon the soul. 
Repentance is per force, and works by death 
Repentance toward God, while man enjoys 
A free probation works reform of life, 
But a repentance forced upon the will, 
In view of evil consequence to self. 
Must work by death in self-condemned minds. 

Another source of spiritual death 
Is the soul's powers, discordant in themselves, 
And warring with each other.® The mind is curs'd 
With bosom furies, when eternal strife 
Between the moral powers of the mind, 
Is fierce and dissonant. Mark yonder wretch. 
Whose breast is filled with an adulterous love 
For one as fallen and guilty as himself ; — 



WORTH OF THE SOUL. 43 

Reason condemns the action of his heart, 

While passion rages against reason's rule — ■ 

Thus tortured by dissention in his soul, 

His trusting wife is spurned ; her kindly acts 

Conjure up furies in his tortured mind : 

Thus love of guilty objects creates hate 

For objects which the heart should cherish most; 

And when reflection comes, as come it must, 

Then reason wages an eternal war 

With vile affections cherished in the mind : 

But when the heart loves the Supremely Good, 

Reason and conscience will their sanction give ; 

And thus, harmonious, the soul's faculties 

Acting accordant — are in action blest. 

Concealment is the only piece of sin.® 
So long as the clay tabernacle veils 
The guilty spirit from all holy eyes. 
Self-condemnation may not sting the soul ; 
But when the mind shall know, as it is known 
By all the universe, then it will feel 
That every holy eye that turns a glance 
Upon its evil nature causes pain. 
Where guilt is known, and guilt abhor'd 
By holy beings, the guilty can not live. 
In outer darkness they would rather hide 
Than be reveal'd, and dwell with holy minds: 



44 THE SOUL. 

Then what deep anguish must the guilty feel 

When in the presence of the universe, 

Their nature is revealed. O God of Hosts ! 

In mercy infinite Thy hand hath rear'd 

The prison of the damn'd, where wicked minds 

May hide themselves in darkness, and escape 

The immediate presence of all holy eyes. 

Thus saints shall judge the world. Their views of sin 

Will be a judgment felt by guilty minds, 

When conscious of their notice. 

The priceless worth of human souls is seen 
In the endowment of free agency — 
High as heaven, profound as hell, the power 
Of good and evil. Every mind creates 
Itself a destiny. Each act of wrong 
Produced by a free will, augments the source 
From which the wrong doth flow, and ev'ry act 
Of good forms a benev'lent character : 
Thus good and evil action still reacts 
Each spirit working out its future doom. 

Evil begets its kind, and so doth good ; " 
And souls benignant, in whose inner life 
The flame of love burns vigorous and pure, 
Diffuse around a blessing on all things 
That move within the limits of their sphere. 



WORTH OF THE SOUL. 45 

The power of love is stronger than the might 
Of all things earthly. The dumb creature feels 
Its holy influence ; and God himself regards 
Contrite affection, the best sacrifice 
The human soul can offer to its Lord. 
He that can walk abroad, with bosom warm 
With interest and love for living things, 
Possesses heaven's secret. His heart is blest, 
While its outflowing goodness blesses all 
The various forms of life along his path : — 
In all the creatures form'd for human use 
There is a sense which wakens gratitude, 
For acts that human kindness may bestow. 
The sum of happiness in sentient life, 
Is increas'd by kind offices of love, 
Confer'd on sentient beings. When the bird 
Flies to our window, or the neighing steed 
Approaches in the pasture — or the dog. 
With eye dilated, licks the open hand 
Of his lov'd master — 'tis the heart's response 
In answer for the kindnesses bestowed. 
— O were it gi'anted that the animal 
Might but articulate what things are known 
And felt by it, how would its words surprise 
The mind that always cares for creature wants; 
And how surprise with words of deep reproach, 
The unthinking ruler of the tliinkino; brute! 



46 THE SOUL. 

So may the soul create in sentient life, 
By its own action, love and gratitude; 
And thus increase the sum of happiness 
Within the universe; or it may mar 
The natures it might bless; and thus confer 
Tortures on beings that have no redress. 

But in a higher circle and among 
Immortals like itself, the human soul 
Fulfils a destiny, fraught with i-esults. 
Direful or glorious. — If the spirit be 
Filled with the peace of faith, and moved by love 
That seeks all human good, then is its life 
A blessing; and it sheds on other minds 
A precious influence. Within such souls 
Love's incense, burn'd in light, has power to shed 
A heavenly fragrance o'er the path of life. — 
Such minds bestow a blessing far beyond 
What learning, wealth, or influence can give: 
At their approach vice is abashed, and flies 
To his dark haunts; and virtue feels the charm 
Of power and love. — The wav'ring are confirm'd; 
And angel spirits, hov'ring near, rejoice 
In deeds of mercy done by kindred minds. 

But if a settled selfishness possess 
And rule the will, it spreads a taint abroad 



WORTH OF THE SOUL. 47 

Of fear, oppugnance, or of discontent, 

Felt both by reasoning and uni'easoning things — 

That soul is as a curse, enrob'd in flesh. 

Which breathes the blight within its bosom out 

On sentient beings which surround its path. 

Evil begetteth evil — Selfishness 

Begetteth selfishness in other minds — 

Wrath engenders wrath ; and hatred hate ; 

The vicious create vice, and vicious minds 

When aggregated in communities, 

Corrupt the mass; and send an influence forth 

Which overshadov^^s mankind, like a curse 

That clouds the sun of heaven, and sheddeth down 

Blighting and mildew on the minds of men. 

Like to the slimy worms, which leave their blight 

On every grass blade, and the opening flowers 

O'er which they pass. — So evil natures may, 

Beginning at the hearth-stone, mar the heart 

Of infant years — seduce the youth to sin. 

And dye the stain of selfishness more deep 

In every nature where their shadows fall — 

And like the fabled vampyre fiend, which lives 

Upon the life-blood of its best belov'd. 

So souls malignant in their influence. 

Blight all they reach, — the best belov'd first! 

Who can compute the strength of man's free will 



48 THE SOUL. 

To work death evils in the souls of men! 
A devil could no more than injure all 
Within the compass of his influence! 
So does the soul on whom the curse has fall'n, 
Of selfishness and hatred unto God. 

Such souls transmit their sin — 
They impress themselves as with a signature, 
On after generations; and 'tis thus 
That races are infected with the taint 
Of sin's deep leprosy, till nations lie 
" Festering in the infection of their guilt." 
And God, in wrath, breaks up the might}^ deep 
To whelm the guilty race; or sends the plague 
To pour infection o'er the cities doomed — 
Or human conqueror, with fire and sword, 
To smite unworthy races for their crimes. 
And rebaptise the earth in blood and flames. 

Thus is the soul endowed with power to bless 
Or curse the world of sentient life, and bring 
The blessing or the wrath of God on men. 

And more, the evil which the soul creates 
Outlives the mortal life : '^ and oft when men 
Are slumb'ring in their graves augments its power. 
And multiplies itself till close of time. 



WORTH OF THE SOUL. 49 

As pebble cast into a quiet lake 

Sinks in its waters, but its impress lives, 

And spreading on tbe surfoce, still expands, 

Until it ripples to the farthest shore. 

So human life, in the vast teeming sea 

Of sentient being cast, creates an eddy 

Which expands and rolls, through all the course of 

Time, 
On to the precincts of Eternity ! 

Hear yonder spirit lost, — it shrieks a prayer 
In vain endeavor to be heard on earth! 
Caught ye its import? Stop the press! it cries; 
Issue no other leaf of the profane 
And lustful cogitations of my mind: 
I honored vice — bepraised the selfish great. 
And worshiped intellect, though foul wnth guilt. 
And ev'ry heart that wretch's works pollute, 
And ev'ry virtue which they mar in time. 
Stings the lost spirit in eternity, — 
And as the influence rolls the pangs increase, 
And, agonized, the self-condemned soul 
Shrieks, stop the press! but still the press works on. 
And flings the evil to the end of time! 
" His works do follow him," and mighty God, 
What free-wiird being can hereafter feel 
More just damnation than the wretch defunct, 
3 



50 THE SOUL. 

Who left an influence on eartlily thought 
That kills the germs of virtue in the soul. 

But hark! the angel of th' Apocalypse 
Makes affirmation of the righteous dead; 
The Holy Spirit beai-eth witness loo — 
" Blest are the dead who, dying in the Lord, 
Rest from their labors, for their works on earth 
Do follow them." And as the influence 
Of their example and their thought moves on, 
Blessing the minds of others that remain 
Upon the earth, the righteous dead rejoice, 
And glorify the God who gave them strength 
To do His will in time, and ever joyous 
They exult and sing, O holy, holy, holy is the Lord. 

The law of God will execute itself 
Within the soul forever. While memory lives 
Man's earthly history will constitute 
Eternal condemnation or reward." 
— Thought is imperishable, and every act 
Of which the soul was ever cognizant 
Is graven on the tablets of the mind,* 
Until the books are opened and all things 
Are brought forth at the great assize of God. 

* * * -yy-g j-iave not done with sin 

*See this psychological fact illustrated in Abercrombie's In. Phil. 



WORTH OF THE SOUL. 5 1 

When 'tis cominitted, or when 'tis forgot; 
Like unto seeds deep buried in the earth, 
Which germinate when thrown up to the sun, 
So sin may He long hidden 'neath the weight 
Of life's events, till, in the sunlight of eternity, 
Memory again unites the tie that binds 
Action and actor in eternal bonds. 

— God has united cause and consequence, 
Both in the mental and material world — 
The effect suggests the cause by mental law, 
Fix'd and efficient as the rule of fote : 

— As when the effect of some past sin in life 
O'ertakes a culprit in his after years. 

The pain awakens memory — the guilty act 
Is reproduced, and self-condemning pangs 
Accompany the memory of the deed. — 

This is God's law, and every soul that leaves 
The mortal for the spiritual sphere 
Leaves its chief good, or goes to it in heaven. 
If left, 'tis loss — if found, eternal gain. 
" Tis home where'er the heart is," — if on earth, 
We leave the objects that we cherish most; 
The heart, dissevered from its chosen good, 
Will ache and bleed, all anguish'd and bereft. 
Thus selfish minds when disembodied feel 
The anguish of bereavement; the effect 



52 



THE SOUL. 



Suggests the cause — the cause was sin and self, 
And Memory comes and binds upon the soul 
The body of this death. 

But if, in the hereafter, we approach 
Our object of chief love, joy will spring forth, 
And bliss suggests its cause, — that cause is not 
Works done on earth, but Christ, the blessed Lord, 
And the heart, satisfied, exults and sings 
" To Him that loved us, and wash'd us from 
Our sins in His own blood, be honor, praise, 
Dominion, glory, ever more." Amen. 



O living man, while it is called to-day, 
Ponder the question of the Son of God : 
" What will it profit, if a man, to gain 
The whole of earth, should lose the priceless soul; 
Or what for his redemption can he give 
Whose soul is doom'd to die the second death?" 

Think, selfish mortal — let your reason grasp 
The import of the question, and then go 
With contrite sj^irit and believe in Christ — 
So faith that works by love may cast out death 
And give thee life divine, — a life that crowns 
The soul with glory — honor — immortality ! 




LUCILLA: 

TEN SCENES IN THE LIFE OF A LADY OF 
FASHION. 



A SOCIAL DRAMA. 



The following drama of fashionable life originated in a 
singular incident. There came to the quiet city in which I 
was residing, an Eastern gentleman [J. G. S.] of character 
and culture, to deliver a poem at the opening of a new in- 
stitution for the education of young ladies. It so happened 
that the president of a neighboring college and the poet of 
the occasion took tea at my house. We talked of the 
methods and the matter of a lecture best adapted to interest 
Western audiences. It was suggested that audiences at the 
West did not fully appreciate the excellence of many lec- 
tures with which they were honored. I was a Western 
man by experience and predilection ; and this may have 
prompted me to suggest, that what were called excellencies 
in some lectures might really be defects. Such lectures 
possessed excellencies of a certain kind, but they were not 
such as could be designated by the terms practical or nar 
tural. A lecture that magnifies some subject out of its 
relative importance ; — that makes a great matter in words 



56 LUCILLA. 

and phrases out of a common idea, would be more likely 
to succeed at the East than at the West. It was said that 
those who emigrated from an older country were generally 
men of strong purpose and active minds, rather than those 
who remained behind. Hence, if there were any difference, 
a lecture embracing the practical — the real — the useful, 
in experience and in progress, presented in fitting and ex- 
hilarating phrase and form, would be as likely to be appre- 
ciated by the mass-audiences of the West as the East. 

Very unexpectedly I noticed that my unthoughtful re- 
marks were taken as indicating a challenge of the merit of 
lecturers invited from older States. I endeavored to mend 
the matter by saying that Western taste might prefer the 
common and practical rather than the elevated and refined ; 
and proposed to test the jnatter by giving notice that even- 
ing that I would myself deliver a lecture in poetry to the 
same audience in a fortnight from that time, and ask Presi- 
dent T. to be present to witness the result. The remark 
itself perhaps was improper, and its effect indicated that 
the subject should be dropped. The manner, however, in 
which it was received stimulated my will to make the effort ; 
and in less than a month the following poem was delivered 
to an audience composed mostly of the same persons who 
were present on the evening in question. And, perhaps, 
for other reasons than its intrinsic value, it was better re- 
ceived than its predecessor. 

The Poem is of the composite order, being limited to a 
few days and to the spare hours which other duties did not 
demand. I wrought into the thread of the narrative some 
unpublished pieces which I found among my papers. As 
from time to time I turned from other duties to rest my 
mind by a change of thought, I changed the mood and 
measure of the rhyme, sometimes to suit my own mood, 
but generally to suit the character of the life-picture I de- 
sired to delineate. This rendered the writing easy and 
pleasant for me ; and if I do not misjudge, it will relieve 
the tedium somewhat for the reader. 

The lady of whose life the drama is a chronotype, was a 



A SOCIAL DRAMA. 57 

highly-gifted woman, — the eldest daughter in a wealthy 
family. The sketches are a true experience. Some pas- 
sages may seem" intense, some puerile ; but truth is inexor- 
able. I have described the incidents as occurring in a city 
which is to be the largest interior commercial city of the 
world, and one in whose past history and present prosperity 
I have both a moral and a pecuniary interest. 

I speak of scenes in the life of a lady of fashion. I do 
not mean by this, that persons of wealth and culture are all 
devoted to the follies of a heartless life. I am glad to know 
that this is not always true, especially in the quiet interior 
cities of the country. Comfort and good taste are not to be 
condemned as attributes of fashion. The highest culture 
may be adorned and sweetened by piety ; and large pos- 
sessions often prompt and aid a life of active goodness. 

But fashion often reigns as a tyrant both in large cities 
and little ones, deforming " the human form divine," and 
paganizing the person with tawdry stuffs and jewels. How 
far the Lady of the Drama belonged to one or the other of 
these classes, it is for the reader to judge. I fear, like too 
many others, having made a mistake in early life, she was 
unable to extricate herself in later years, when she awoke 
gradually to a sense of the evil in which she and her 
family were involved. Let others profit by her experience, 
and then, although written hastily, her heart-history will 
not have been written in vain. 

The poem was written for an audience of young ladies, 
pursuing the higher branches of study, and looking forward 
to the active world, where each one was soon to have a per- 
sonal experience -^ and each to act a part in the Drama of 
Life. The object was to admonish those who were soon to 
assume such responsibilities, by delineating the misery and 
mischief which unfailingly attend a heartless and hypocriti- 
cal life. It is now given to the public with like hope. May 
the Good Spirit give it impression, 

3* 




DRAMATIS PERSONS. 



LuciLLA — A lady in fashionable life. 

Ann — Her younger and less thoughtful sister. 

Misses Leslie — Daughters in a family that had grown 
suddenly rich. 

Alfred — A young man between whom and Lucilla 
there had existed an early and true attachment. 

Lucilla's Husband, Son, two Daughters, and 
Other Friends. 




LUCILLA — A SOCIAL DRAMA. 



SCENE I. 



The City^ and the Introduction of the Lady. 

In the fair West, — upon a bright lake's strand, 
Where cities, reared by magic progress, stand, — 
Where enterprise, the genius of the place, 
Developes energy and adds a grace — 
Uprose the Garden City! Earth and air, 
And the dull waters seem excited there — 
There Wealth is wed to Progress and gives birth 
To marts for commerce and saloons for mirth — 
Retreats where Vice that shuns the eye of day 
Spreads her allurements, and beguiles her prey; 
And holy charity her altar rears. 
And holds the urn where drop the orphan's tears. 

Here dwell'd the fair Lucilla; and to-night 
A speculator's mansion is a-light, 



6o LUCILLA, 

And joyous courtesies are passing free 

Among a gay assembling company; 

Friends meeting friends salute, trained voices sing, 

And others join the conversation ring; 

Some promenade, while others try their skill 

And trip it lightly in the gay quadrille: 

But one seems mistress of the festive scene, 

Fair and self-conscious as a reigning queen. 

There w^as grace in her movement and light in 
her eye; 
And the air caught perfume as the maiden pass'd by. 
She had braided a rose in her dark auburn hair, 
And pearls link'd with gold lay on shoulders so fair — 
Her form seems to swim in the maze of the dance. 
While the ardor of motion her graces enhance. — 
There were few who beheld her in loveliness then 
But that maid would come back to tiieir mem'ry again. 

Past noon of night in those parlors gay 
There's a murmur of voices passing away; 
The threshold is cross'd by footsteps light, 
And the last "fair" lingerer says "good night!" 

When the gay ones were gone Lucilla stood 
With a w^earied mien and an altered mood. 
The light still stream'd with a glint and a glow 
From the chandel-a-bras and the drops below : 
A thoughtful pause marked the maiden's look. 



A SOCIAL DRAMA. 6l 

As in silence one thinks of the sense of a book, 
And a dccp-di-awn sigh gently swell'd her breast, 
As she sank on the sofa to think and to rest. 

Her mind now traced with an eager flight 
The varied scenes of that festive night, 
And mingled emotions of pride or scorn — 
Of triumph or envy succeed by turn: — 
With a wearied frame and an anxious breast 
The Lady of Fashion retired to rest, 
And while angels of mercy await and weep, 
She sinks in a fitful and troubled sleep. 

She dream'd of one from the summer land. 
Where the wild orange blooms and the breezes are bland, 
His bearing was graceful — his deep, dark eye 
Follow'd her movements inquiringly ; 
His words were few — but spoken with soul 
That went to her heart with magic control, 
That thro' all her being so subtly wrought. 
That words she gave others, while he had her thought. 

But he came and went; and she could not tell 
If he e'er should return to renew the spell. 




SCENE II. 



The NoveU the Drama, and the Poor. 



It was a fearful night in the mid-winter, 
But th' parlor air was soft as summer eve: 
The wine geranium and the fragrant shrub 
Sprang from their painted vases. Rich curtains hung, 
Massive and warm, upon the window frames; 
And mellow beams, through soften'd glass diffused, 
Lay still and slumb'rous on the parlor scene. 

Lucilla sat with mind intent upon 
The last new story of a novelist ; — 
The tale was false to nature, and gave views 
Of love and duty all untrue to life: — 
The lady's heart was melted with the woe 
Of the ideal hero: — Absorb'd she sat; 
Her mind entranced; her interest intense; 
Forgetful of the world in which she lived; — 
Awake to nothing but the writer's thousrht. 



A SOCIAL DRAMA. 63 

Without the winds hlcw fierce and fitfully, 
Drifting- in chilling- eddies thro' the street 
— But hark, the bell — Lucilla look'd and spoke — 
" Who rung? " — " Who 's out, a horrid night like this? " 
The servant tells — 

Sei'vant. A woman 's in the hall, 
And begs to see the lady : — 

Lucilla. Let her in : — 
A shiv'ring widow thus her tale relates : — 

Oh lady, turn me not away 

Till you have heard my tale of soitow, 
My little boy has died to-day — 

Poor child, they bury him to-morrow. 

When he was sick, how sad and slow 
I went to work, and left him crying, 

But some days past I could not go. 
For ev'ry day I thought him dying. 

Lady ! I have another child, 

I came away and left her sleeping — 

Poor Ellen Jane! — she looked so wild 
When Willie died, and I was weeping. 

Indeed I never beg'd before, 

For I can work, and I am willing; 

Nor would I now stand at your door 
But for the sake of little Ellen. 



64 



LUCILLA. 



Poor child, — she cried herself to sleep, 
And when she felt the pangs of hunger, 

It griev'd her so to see me weep. 

She said she still could hear them longer. 

Dear lady, give the smallest sum, — 
A loaf of bread costs but a shilling; 

And if you doubt, your maid may come 
And see it 's truth that I am telling. 

A sigh, — an earnest look, sad and sincere, 
Accompanied the widow's tale of woe. 

Lucilla heard in silence — not a look, 
Nor indication that she had a heart, 
Was visible in feature or in voice. 
Her face was beautiful; but statue like, 
'Twas cold in beauty, as the chisel' d stone. 
Her sister woman's sorrow mov'd her not — 
Absorb'd in the false tale she coldly said, 
" The servant will go back with you, and get 
Some cold provision for your starving child." 

— What palsied thus Lucilla's heart, and chill'd 
The milk of human kindness in her breast? 
— The novel and the drama : — they had kill'd 
And clos'd the soul to Mercy's sweet behest — 
Exaggeration and factitious woe 
Had wrung and wrought and overwrought her heart, 



A SOCIAL DRAMA. 65 

'Till scenes of real life which fell below 
The tale of Fancy, could no power impart 
To move her sympathies, or make her feel 
A sister's interest in a sister's weal. 

Refrain — 

But is all fiction evil ? — may not thought, 
Portraying true heart history, be given 
In fitting phrase, with Virtue's praise inwrought. 
While Vice and Sham to their low haunts are driven ? 
— Perhaps 'tis true, — but few select the pure 
From pools of poison and remain secure 
From evil taint: — and all hearts take their hue 
From thoughts with which they convei"se — false or true. 





SCENE III, 



A Prologue, and the Fashmtable Call. 

How sweet the social courtesies of life, 
When imconstrain'd b}^ forms and fallacies. 
When friendship finds its true affinity 
In other minds, then social ties are blest — 
To feel that we have friends who know our hearts 
As we know theirs. Thus freed from false constraint, 
Friendship is blest by liberty and love. 

But Fashion's vot'ries live a double life — 
The outward semblance and the inward truth. 
All souls are conscious what they ought to be. 
And oftentimes assume the garb of truth, 
While hollow phrase of love and courtesy 
Cover the real motions of the mind. 
— Here foUoweth a scene, an ev'ry-day 
Exhibit of the life of the false world 
Of Fashion : 



a social drama.. 67 

The Fashionable Calls. 

LuciLLA and her Cousin in the parlor. Enter the 
Misses Leslie. 

Miss L. Good morning, Lucilla — why how do 
you do? 
I am really glad you are looking so well; 
And how is your cousin ? — Why Jane, is it true 
That you're to be married? — Now Jenny, do tell? 
Jen7iy. What nonsense — (he, he!) can you think 
so of me ; 
Why Charley has called — I hardly know when; 
'Tis easier to marry than (he, he,) to get free 
When married. 

Lu. Have you call'd on the Penys again? 
Aliss L. Why, la ! I've neglected them. — Well, I 
must go 
Day after to-morrow. — Oh, no, let me see — 
I'm engaged on that night. — Do the Wickershams 

know 
Of the concert next Friday? 
Ln. Indeed, I can't say. 

Miss L. The Claytons have gone to the Springs. 
Did you hear that Delia has join'd St. Paul's church ? 
yenny. He, he! No! 

Miss L. Well, it's true — for Tim Jackson was 
there, and he see 'er. — 



68 LUCILLA. 

Oh dear, how we're staying! Come, Sue, let us go. 
— Now, Cillie, do call, just as soon as you can. 
And bring in your cousin. — I am sure it's so nigh 
That you might call often. — And Jennie do come 
And sit a whole evening ; he, he, he ! Good bye. 

[Exeunt the Misses Leslie. 

Said Lucilla — How low these Miss Leslies appear ; 
They have nothing on earth but their wealth to 
commend them; 
I am really glad sister Ann was not here, 

For she hates them intensely and means to offend 
them. 

Said the Leslies — Lucilla looks really old ; 

I wonder why people pay her such attention ; — 
And I know the reason why Ann acts so cold. 

And so does our Richai-d — Let's call on Miss 
Empshin. 

zd Leslie. No, let us wait, for I have heard 

That Empshin's going to fail ; 
Old Peterkin's gone by the board, 

And Empshin was his bail — 
Oh no, we must not call to-day — 

Their character's in doubt; 
We may be caught — let's stay away, 

And see how it turns out. 



A SOCIAL DRAMA. 69 

But let us call on Anne Bright, 

For Richard says, when last he met her, 
She had her colors on just right — 

An angel could not look no better. 
15/ Leslie. Wonder where Anne buys her white, 

They say she's never seen without it. 
I've heard she is a perfect fright 

When she's not painted : * * 
2d Leslie. Who can doubt it. 

Thus, the poor devotees of Fashion live 

A heartless, aimless and deceitful life ; 
Go, upright man, implore kind heaven to give 

A WOMAN — not an angel — for a wife. 

Refrain — 
In this commonplace world — if the truth must be told. 

Angel wives we will gladly forego; 
Flesh and blood is far better, — and over the river 

Our wives will be angels, you know. 




SCENE IV. 

The Fashionable Sabbath and Fashionable Church. 

'Tis Sabbath morning in the month of June; 
The sun has risen in splendor. The Hght wind 
Breathing among the treUis'd vines, has kissed 
Their fragi-ant buds, and so its breath is bahn. 
But in yon home of affluence and ease 
The sash is closed, that the fresh morning air, 
Perfum'd by Hygiene's breath, may not inti'ude. 

Within her chamber, splendidly attired. 
Sat fair Lucilla. Her white slender hand 
Was pressed upon her side, and a slight sigh 
Betoken'd pain. Misguided care in youth 
Had wrapped her person in so many folds 
Of warm, luxurious garments, the fresh air 
Which gives life-vigor to the form divine, 
And the free exercise, which God ordain'd 
To waken perspiration and give health, 
Were all unknown to her. Her form constrained 
By Fashion's cruel and controlling power 
Into proportions so unnatural, 



A SOCIAL DRAMA. 7 1 

And SO adverse to action, the poor girl 

Had but the semblance, not the joy of health. 

— Nervous she sat. Before her lay the rouge, 
And those appliances which Fashion gives 
Instead of beauty. She arose, and stood 
Before the mirror — changed her posture oft, 
Surveyed herself in various attitudes. 
* * But hark! — a voice — her sister comes in 

haste, 
Anxious what Sabbath costume she shall wear. 

Enter Anx. 
Ann. Cille, suppose I wear, to-day. 
My dove silk dress and plain French collar? 
Would my light slippers look too gay .'' 
— I'll never give another dollar 
To Madame Fran9ais. — My new hat 
Is a mere botch — I hate to wear it — 
She's done with me! — I'll tell her that! — 
I'll let her know that I'll not bear it. 

Lucilla. What nonsense, Ann — 'tis well enough; 
The hat she made for Frances Fuller 
Is just like yours, — of just such stuff, 
Except the difference in the color. 

Ann. I hate to wear it, — if I do, 
'T will set those silly Leslies gazing ; 



72 LUCILLA. 

When one comes out with something new 
The people stare so — 'tis amazing, 

— But there's the bell — well, we must go — 

Do you think George Day '11 be out this morning? 

— I really wish that I could know. 

— The Petershams are in deep mourning. * 

— Wonder who's dead? 

Lucllla. Why, make haste, Ann; 
The bells have been some time a-rinsfinof: 
We ought to be there, if we can, 
Before they're through with the first singing. 

Mark those young ladies: they are beautiful; 
The elder one is stately, and her mien 
Betrays the consciousness that she has felt 
The prestige of position. They have pass'd 
Into an edifice whose towering spire, 
Rich painted windows, and well-furnished pews 
Tell us that men of dignity and wealth 
Profess to love the lowly Nazarene. 

The minister is eloquent. He bears 
Himself with ease and dignity, and speaks 
With a becoming reverence of Christ, 
The glorious Saviour. But his truth is tame, 
And his fine voice devoid of earnestness. 
He lacks heart-power to give his preaching soul. 
And speak with prophet's courage against sin. 



A SOCIAL DRAMA. 73 

He has not learned the faithfuhiess of Christ, 
Who spoke the truth in love, and yet denounced 
Pride, privilege and vice in church and state — 
Ambition, lust and subtle selfishness. 
In all their myriad forms, Jesus i^eproved — 
Reprov'd dogmatic hypocrites and scribes, 
And doctors of divinity * — all who seek 
For lucre's bribe, or to be seen of men. 

But one, unlike the Master, stood to teach 
The Master's precepts. Skillful to o'erlook 
Sin in high places, — wise to dogmatize 
On texts and doctrines, — zealous for a sect; 
And in most polished phrase to generalize 
On sin's great evils, and the love of God. 

Widi an inviting clause the sermon closed. 
The doctor prayed, the purchased quartette sung — 
The soulless organ piped its melody 
Unto the congregation — not to God, — 
Pealing its master harmonies in ears 
Which heard the sound without the sense of truth. 

Lucilla thought the singing exquisite, — 
The alto executed admirably. 

* Matt, xxiii : S, "Be ye not called Rabbi." — ^Jesus Christ. This word has 
precisely the import of Doctor of Divinity. "Jesus forbade his disciples to 
seek [receive] such titles of distinction. The reason Me gave was that He 
was Himself their Master and Teacher." — Albert Barnes, an authority 
accepted by those who willingly disobey this positive command of Jesus. 

4 



74 LUCILLA. 

But Ann wasvex'd. — The Leslies gazed about, 
And spoke her name too loud as they came out. 
— She said that the fools meant to let people know 
That they knew her^ by hollering in company so. 

Sunday evening. Lucilla's soliloquy. 

In quiet hours Lucilla had her thoughts 
Of sacred subjects, much above the range 
Of common minds. Kind nature had bestow'd 
On her the boon of gifted intellect, — 
The heartless world had her affections chill'd, 
And had perverted, but yet could not kill 
Her better reason. In meditation oft 
She spoke in language of deep, searching thought — 
It seem'd as tho' a light were in her soul 
That might have led her to the gate of heaven : 
This Sabbath night — the Bible in her hand. 
She talked and mus'd in bitter words like these : 

If I were sure Christianity were true^ 
I should be ?niserahlel If this strange book 
Be light from heaven, 'tis light that blinds the eyes! 
Yet 'tmay be so! A gospel to the soul 
That seeks for peace in purity and love, 
And teaches men to find their happiness 
In labors for their kind, — cares for the poor, — 
Calls God our Father — men a brotherhood — 
If this be falsehood^ then, what would be truth? 



A SOCIAL DRAMA. 75 

The text to-day was clear, — " Christ came to 
preach 
The gospel to the poor — to heal the sick — 
To open the blind eyes, and liberate 
The captive." 

The doctor made it plain, — 
But still the fact — the staring fact remains, 
The poor are shut as truly from our pews 
As though church officers stood at the door 
To drive them from its threshold ! — 

And then the text — 
" To open the blind eyes." Pray, who are they 
Whose eyes are opened now to see the world 
As those apostles saw it? — " Therds the rubV* 
— If this New Testament be true, I fear 
Our views of it are fixlse. But still, 'tis not 
For me to judge. The world is different now 
From what it was : — Perhaps the church is right. 

Tlie preacher said our nature must be chang'd 
Ere we find happiness in Christian life. — 
What is that change.? Is Mrs. Selfhood chang'd.? 
Yes — changT'd as much as Ann and I are chan<r'd. 



[Ann (^interjecting) — Why, Cille, jou fool, we were 
clianged by the chrism 
The minister used in the rite of baptism.] — 



76 LUCILLA. 

Does Mr. Mundane live a Christian life ? — 
Then what is Christian life? Is it fulfiU'd 
By a profession, while our daily walk 
Follows the forms and fashions of the world? 
Is this to bear the cross? — My soul is sick! 
Such mockery is baseness and a crime. 
— The lewd, the base, the shallow and the vain 
Wear on their persons and their books a cross — 
The badge of self-denial unto death. 
What arrant hypocrites! This volume says 
" Friends of the world are enemies of God." 
But that makes me His enemy, — yes, me I 
It can't be true, — I'm not His enemy! 
But would a friend refuse t' obey His will ? 

* * Perhaps God has no will ! — that can't be so, 
For I have will; and if God has a will, 

And my will differs from the will divine, 
God must submit to me, or I to God. 

* * Is that the issue? Is there no escape? 

And then there's Mr. Manfold and his wife, 
Possessing wealth and all the means to live 
As others do. Sure, they are not like me. 
Is it the Christian faith that gives them peace? 
I doubt it. Yet how earnest and how sweet 
That Mrs. Manfold is. — She told me once 
That love of Jesus was the Christian's life, 



A SOCIAL DRAMA. 77 

And that 't was pleasant to deny herself, 

For Jesus' sake, by labors to do good : — 

She said " faith works by love." — Perhaps it does. 

In her. In some it works by hate — 

That much I know. Can faith work contraries .'' 

'Tis in the nature — not the creed — thaVs it I — 

I have it now ! — His nature and Jiot faith. 

— But Mrs. Manfold says that once she sought 
Her happiness in pleasure and found pain, 

As I do now — As all self-seekers do. 

Alas! Alas! I'm weary of my thought. 

'Tis hard to find the truth. I sometimes think 

There is no truth. — And yet there must be truth. — 

Pilate, you question'd well : Ask'd Jesus, " What is 

truth?" 

And why, O Christ, didst Thou not answer him.? 

O God, if God there be, — where ? what is truth ? 
****** 

Well, Cille, said Ann, 
If you're done with your preaching — look here ; 
This fringe is all soil'd — I must have a new fan 
And such things are confoundedly dear. 
— George Day wasn't there. — Did you notice Miss Jones 
Try to show folks her dear little feet.'' 

— What an awkward young man sat with old daddy 

Holmes ! — 
Oh dear ! I want something to eat. \Exit Ann. 




SCENE V. 



Wedlock and the Weddhtg. 



Hail wedded love — a benison that brings 
Peace to the truly good and virtuous breast ; 
The earth has not among her precious things 
An influence so priceless and so blest 
As that affection which in wedlock binds 
In harmony of will two mated minds. 

Lucilla lov'd, but not with sincere 
And consecrate affection which is felt 
By the true-hearted. Ambition, worldly aims, 
And love of lucre mingled their alloy, 
Tainting the sweetest fount that flows on earth - 
A bride's affection. 

In early years 
Lucilla had a secret of the heart, 
Known now but to herself and the All-wise: — 
A manly youth had met her oftentimes 
In a i-etir'd circle. She knew well 



A SOCIAL DRAMA. 79 

The worth of his true heart. Her maiden instinct saw 

Something in Alfred's manner and his eye 

Tiiat told a secret women love to learn — 

She felt the charm, and yet she gave no sign : 

But oft she thought : — It may not be, and yet, 

He could award me tenderness and trust 

Of which low natures are incapable. 

Alfred was poor — Lucilla felt the ban ; 
She had a strength of purpose and a will 
That could have burst it. But the laugh 
Of the gay world — estranged associates. 
The anticipated pang? of wounded pride — 
Even the Leslies' sneer, whom she despised — 
Forbade her heart congenial fellowship. 

That secret will not die but in her grave. 

Refi-ai7i — 

— And yet, 'tis well — a man of sense may wed 
A maiden of sweet heart, and raise her head 
Into the social circle where he moves — 
But 'tis not so with woman — if she loves 
Without her sphere — she drinks love's bitter cup ; 
She can't go down and bring her lover up. 

Lucilla gave her hand to one who was 
Her equal in the world's false estimate. 
She did not hate him — nay, perhaps she lov'd ; 
She thought she did, when she could keep her mind 



8o LUCILLA. 

From certain thoughts which sometimes troubled her. 

Her suitor could not love — he had no heart; 

His miud was not inferior, and his name 

Was common in high circles; but his heart 

Had been exhausted, and his conscience kill'd 

By meretricious amours. 'Tis sad but true, 

His marriage was no secret to the frail 

And fallen creature whose embrace he left, 

To vow eternal constancy to one 

Of whom he was unworthy. But 'tis thus 

In the gay world I 

The marriage pomp was o'er, * * 
The journey finished, and the settlement — 
Lucilla still seem'd happy : — Perhaps she was ! — 
She hoped she should be happy : — Hoped she was ! 

Another had his thoughts, Alfred knew well 
That vice confirmed, like the dread vampyre's tooth 
Extracts the love-life from the victim's heart. 
He could forecast the future, and he fear'd 
That hope, and peace, and all were lost to one 
Who had the heart-thought of his early years. 
But for himself he now could feel no loss, 
A_truer heart sat in his pleasant home; 
Success was his, and a good name ; but still 
He pitied his old friend, and thus express'd 
In modest verse his sense of the event : — 



a social drama. 8 1 

Alfred's Stanzas on Lucilla's Marriage. 

I saw a maiden freshly fair 

As summer day in spring, 
With lips as ripening roses are 
That shed their fragrance on the air 

T' embalm the zephyr's wing. 

I saw her thread the wildering maze 

Of Fashion's flow'ry way, 
Elicit light from starry eyes, 
And court the smile, and win the gaze 

Of th' opulent and gay. 

I saw her in her maiden prime 

For sordid lucre sold ; 
She wreath'd with gloom the brow of Time, 
And gave her heart at Hymen's shrine, 

A sacrifice to gold. 

I ask'd a youth of pleasing mien. 

Who once admired the maid. 
How she could waste love's gen'rous glow 
On sullied lips and sordid brow — 

* * He turnd away and slgKd. 




SCENE VI. 



Alaternity. 

Maternity, thy fond solicitudes 
Evince the wisdom of the Blessed One, 
Who bindeth to the mother's heart the babe 
By holy ties. 

And thus, as time pass'd on, 
Upon the arm of a fair lady la}'^ 
A sprightly child — sprightly, but oftentimes 
Unlovely and perverse. 'Tvvas Fashion's child, 
And had imbibed its parents' nervousness. 
Its vital powers were much impair'd by ills. 
Which enervation and luxurious ease 
Had wrought upon its parents. A fair child 
And yet prepense to bad development. 

Lucilla hum'd a cradle-song, and sought 
To soothe it into rest, but sought in vain ; 
The mother's effoi'ts seem'd to kindle rage 
In its infantile bosom : — still she seeks 
To win it to repose by ev'ry art 



A SOCIAL DRAMA. 83 

Which mothers know, but seeks, alas! in vain. 
And now, her patience wearied by the task, 
Has yielded, and with violence she shakes 
The startled infant. It looks wild and screams, 
Red'ning with tiny rage. The mother sighs, 
And calls the maid to take the child away, 
And soothe its perverse will as best she may. 

Sub-scene — Seven Years Later. 

[LuciLLA in the sitting-room rochijig a babe. Enter 
a sprightly boy., seven years old, -whose will had 
never been subdued.^ 

Mother. Why, Edward Alwin! come to motlier, 
dear — 
Sweet little Allie is good boy to-day; 
AUie may have some playthings and stay here. 
For mother loves to see good children play. 

Child. Ma, may I have my hobby-horse, and keep 
My drum in here, and march about the room.? 

Mother. Allie would wake his sister from her sleep ; 
But Ma will find some things for Allie soon. 

Child. No, Ma, I want them izow. — 1 want to play 
With hobby and the whip; — now. Ma, I do. 

Mother. But Allie was to be good boy to-day ; 
And Ma will buy him sugar things, you know. 



84 LUCILLA. 

Child. Ma, buy them now, — let Sally go down 
town 
And get them. Ma, and I'll be good all day, 

Alfred, be still ! said his mother, with a frown. 
Be still I or I will send 3'ou right away. 

The boy is vex'd, and sulks against the wall; — 
Mutters displeasure, — whines, and now he cries. 
His mother sends him out into the hall, 
To keep the babe from waking with the noise; — 
Then calls the maid to take the boy away, 
And soothe his perverse will as best she may. 

Such, oft, are Fashion's children. In later years 
If maids unfit for mothers — invalids, 
Deceiving others with false forms, false colors 
And false heart. If men, debased by vice. 
And wanting manly strength and honesty, — 
Wills unsubdued, and restless whene'er sense 
And sensuous pleasures fliil to gratify. 
Alas for man or woman who is doomed 
By birth and fortune to this venal sphere. 
Where fashion, without conscience, worships gold, 
And marriage is a purchase and a fraud. 

Refrain — 

Thank God for sturdy workers, man and wife, 
To srive a race of men to bear the trust 



A SOCIAL DRAMA. 85 

Our Others have transmitted; and thank God 
For freedom, piety, and schools and law 
That give a discipline of heart and mind 
To men and women who transmit their strength 
To after generations. This is the deep 
Pivotal blessing which our land can boast; — 
While wealth ofttimes breeds feebleness and vice, 
Labor and virtue give us minds and men.'^ 





SCENE VII. 



TJie Matron. 



Years had passed o'er Lucilla, and her life 
Was wearing to its evening. She had seen 
Much secret sorrow — had heard bitter words — 
Had known desertion and an aching heart; 
But still her gay companions knew it not: — 
The outwai'd seeming of her life ran on 
Happy as other matrons of her class. 

All the appliances that worldlings use 
To kill the time, or ease the restless mind, 
Or cheat each other by appearances 
Of wealth or happiness, were known to her: — 

The opera was visited, where art, 
Devoid of natural melody and sense, 
Transforms sweet music to artistic noise — 
Where Fashion's fools are doom'd to sit and hear 
What does not interest them ; then doom'd to lie, 
And speak as tho' they much admir'd the skill 



A SOCIAL DRAMA. 87 

That tortures music to hysteric fits; * 
And lov'd strange grimace and aft'ected tone, 
Better by far than true and lofty thouglit, 
When married to a pleasant melody. ^ 

Niag'ra and the Springs were visited — 
Where each perforce seems glad and gay, but most 
Are sinister at heart, eager for notice. 
Striving and anxious for acknowledgment 
In leading circles, or to make display 
That indicates their wealth to practical 63^65; 
While in their private rooms are flippant words 
Contemptuously or enviously express'd 
In the cant phrase which Fashion's vot'ries use 
In the home circle. * * 

Lucilla saw it all. 
And felt within her soul its hollowness — 
To escape she could not — to reflect was pain — 
Alone, at night, when all but she had gone 
To smile upon a courtesan from France — 
Rachel, — the lewd, — she thus soliloquised : 



* "Music has for a long- time been avowedly mad, — divorced from 
sense and fact, and associated with fiction and delirium only." — Thomas 
Carlvle. 

"There is not one in fifty of those fashionable people ■who attend the 
opera that have any discriminating^ apprehension of the character of the 
music." Yet there is not one in fifty of them that would not lie if you 
asked them how they were pleased with the performance. — Alex. Knox. 



88 LUCILLA. 

Lucilla's Soliloquy on the Theatre. 

I can not kill the time — I still must think! 
Think ! think ! — and less at ease the more I think ■ 
That theatre I — would that fanatic priests 
Could make the world admit what I have learn'd, 
That play-houses breed social pestilence — 
My erring son enticed within its haunts 
By artful syrens, and their Circean cup, 
Is making shipwreck of his mind and means! — 
My daughter^ too I elated by the eclat, 
Encore and clap a harlot from Paris ! — 
— I too must seem to admire the gilded sin, 
Or else be marked as stoical and strange. 
Alas! where is our virtue, when the bounds 
Of right and wrong are blended, and the young 
Applaud the lech'rous and the profligate. 

But then 'tis said amusements are a need — 
Something to exhilarate and vary thought — 
The plea is true for lab' ring, studious minds — 
But 'tis the idle, vicious, and the gay 
That join their voices in the box and pit : — 
Do those at ease, and those of little thought. 
Need plays to ease them of their mental toil ? — 
The thoughtful worker with the mind or arm 
Is seldom there. — The plea is misapplied ; 
If it were true 'twould be irrelevant, 



A SOCIAL DRAMA. 89 

For sti"ong emotion does not rest the mind; 
Exciting scenes deprave or overtax 
The sensibility. Thus incidents 
That form tlie common warp and w^oof of life 
That make home liappy to the pure in heart, 
Become insipid to tlie vapid minds 
Depleted by the stage; and so they seek 
Excitement, as the drunkard seeks his cup ! ° 

And then how few the plays in which the sense 
Of virtuous families — (if such there be 
That frequent these debauch'ries of the soul ) — • 
How few in which there is not introduced 
Some one whose words apologize for sin, 
Or make insidious assaults upon 
The modesty and truth of wedded love? 
And husbands, sons, yea, daughters laugh at scenes 
Which taint heart purity, and thus induce 
A heart defection from right principle — 
Thus are we hypoci'ites, whose virtue stands 
In custom or in caution. — Alas! alas! 
I see the poison, but must swallow it. 

— Just then her daughter enters and rejoins — 
Mother, Camille was true as life to-night — 
But brother was enraptured by the grace 
Of the maid-servant in the minor piece. 
Who kissed Sir George, and promis'd not to tell. 



90 LUCILLA. 

Lu. Leave me, Augusta, — you will drive me mad. 

Those baleful play-houses corrupt us all. 

Aug. Why, mother, you alarm me! — are you ill.'' 
Lti. Leave me, my child; I can not now disclose 

The thoughts that trouble me. 

Increasing care thus weighed upon the heart 
Of our poor friend, Lucilla. Her only son, 
And two fair daughters grown to womanhood, 
Absorb'd by night and day the matron's thought 
Their fother had grown old and taciturn. 
As most men do of wealth and secret vice. 
When age comes on and death is calling them. 
— Her son was shallow and a libertine; 
Her daughters fliir and false as she had been, 
Only remov'd more nearly to the pit 
Where, in three generations, fashion ends 
In nervousness, disease or poverty. 
The mother fear'd the end, and oft a voice 
Said to her soul she'd lived in vain, and worse — 
Had rear'd her children to live more in vain 
Than she had done. 

Sometimes, when a deep sense of her lost life — 
Her disappointed heart, and the dark cloud 
That hung upon the future, stirr'd her soul, 
She spoke in measures of the plaintive muse, 
Such words, as with true pathos often clothe 



A SOCIAL DRAMA. 9I 

The thought of gifted thinkers. — Those rare minds 

Alone and separate, because their souls 

Are singularly gifted. * * * 

They sing apart, and listen to their own sad melodies, 

As one that hears an echo in her heart 

— Sing strains borne of an untold experience, 

Mind-orphans, nursed in solitude and tears. 

Such lonely thinker was our gifted friend. 

When the remembrance of her early years 
Came to her mind, Lucilla mused and mourn'd 
In strains like these : 

Lucilla's Dream of Youth. 

I. 

Methought I reposed on the banks of a stream, 
That, purling o'er pebbles, flowed murmuring by ; 
Its surface, ensilver'd by Cynthia's beam. 
Reflected the star-jewel'd vault of the sky. 

II. 

And I thought that sweet melody, dulcet and wild, 
As a hymn of the wood-nymphs, pass'd by on the 

gale, 
Or the melodied notes of Simplicity's child, 
When his reed's gentle echo dies down in the vale. 

III. 
Enraptur'd by music, ineffable power, 
I listen'd, — and lo ! the sweet euphony sprung 



92 LUCILLA. 

From an island, where roses encircled a bower, 
And LOVE, HOPE and fancy in unison sung. 

IV. 

The waves, circumambient, kissed as they flowed, 
And dappled the turf on the verge of the stream ; 
And flowers, and foliage all soften'd and glow'd 
Like the cheek of an infant that smiles in a dream. 

V. 

Enti'anc'd by the vision I chided delay, 
And long'd o'er the silvery waters to glide; 
On the wave's yielding bosom I floated away. 
And buoyant with hope, cleft the eddying tide. 

VI. 

But the voice of the singers, in rhapsody sweet. 
So mingled itself with the life of my dream, 
That my soul liv'd and mov'd in illusion complete: 
For the island receded along with the strea??i ! 

VII. 

Yet with song in the distance, the isle in my eye. 
And hope in my heart, were my eftbrts increas'd; 
Thus I floated, till clouds overshadow'd the sky. 
The landscape receded ! the melody ceased ! 

VIII. 

Oft an an angel-like voice with significance rife 
Would whisper, O sleeper look up to the skies! 
There hope is fruition, and love is a life — 
The world is delusion — awake, and be wise! 



A SOCIAL DRAMA. 



93 



IX. 

Still I slept, till chill blasts swept the face of the 

stream ; — 
Dark clouds and rude billows encompass'd the way — 
Then blight struck the island! — I woke! — 'twas a 

dream — 
A dream of youth's morning fuljiir d in life's day! 

Sometimes, when hope of earthly good seem'd dead, 



When Past and Future met in one condens'd 
And gloomy shadow o'er Lucilla's soul. 
She almost wish'd to die; and then she sang, 
In a sad, sorrowing voice, this dirge to hope: 

Dirge. 

Sustaining, yet deceptive Hope, farewell ! — 
Last earthly solace, must we ever part? 
No more to cheer me with thy halcyon spell, — 
No more to soothe my aching, aching heart. 

My cup of life with misery is mix'd, — 
My soul has felt the fest'ring, cureless sting, — 
The canker-worm on my heart's strings is fix'd. 
Blighting Hope's fragile blossoms as they spring. 

And fell despair ! — his breath so cold and chill ! 
And icy fingers freeze my spirits up; 
My poor, poor heart — how sad it is, and still — 
And gall and wormwood mingle in my cup. 



94 I>UCILLA. 

I hate the things I thought would pleasure give — 
They can not solace Sorrow's foster-child ; — 
In deserts drear, where tlie gaunt monsters live, 
My heart could echo back their howlings wild. 

Oh ! my sad heart ! — and must I be resign'd, 
Nor love, nor hope, to ever know again; — 
Is there no dwelling-place a wretch may find, 
Unmock'd by Fashion's hollow, honid reign? 

Refrain — 

Yes, sad and stricken spirit, there is balm 
To cause thine anguish ever more to cease. 
Would that thine eyes could see the Martyr-Lamb, 
Thy Friend — Immanuel — Prince of Love and Peace: 
Dead Hope — now buried, info life would spring, 
And thy crush'd heart would worship, pray and sing. 




''H^p^^) 




SCENE VIII. 

Wcddmg of LucillcCs Daughter. 

This week there is a smile upon the face 
Of the gay callers : — Whispers, knowing looks, 
Are interchang'd in certain companies: — 
A secret is pass'd round so privately, 
And told with a strict charge, that each must keep 
The trust from other ears; — a charge observ'd 
Till the first opportunityjs given 
To ease the buiden'd mind, and pass the tale 
To other keepers — with th' injunction still 
That no one knows, and no one must be told. 
— The talkers whisper thus : — 

JFirst Voice. For my part, says one, I never sup- 
posed 
That Augusta would marry Tom Bute ; 
Did you hear that last winter the fellow proposed 
And Miss Lovelace rejected his suit? 

Second Voice. I've heard that he gambles — 

First Voice. Then this is his plan — 
And I think the whole thing's very wrong; 



96 JLUCILLA. 

He's after her money, and thinks the old man 
Will certainly die before long. 

Third Voice. He may be mistaken. I really believe 
The old fellow will live on for years ; 
He knows that they 're longing to mourn o'er his grave, 
And he '11 live, — just to spite his poor heirs. 

Second Voice. Now, Julia, don't mention that my 
Pa is rich, 
Or Joe Orton will call here for tea ; 
They say he '11 have money, or live an old bach, 
— An old bach he may live, for all me. 

Third Voice. Sue, that's all a sham — Orton told 
me last week 
That rich girls he should always despise; 
He wanted a wife that could cook a beef-steak, 
Wash dishes, and make pumpkin pies. 

First Voice. How horridly vulgar ! — why what a 
baboon ! — 
Such impudence surely is shocking! — 
I presume the first thing after the honeymoon 
He would ask one to darn his old stocking! 

Second Voice. La! how I'm disgusted, the poor, 
silly fool, 
He w^as just talking so to be funny — 
Does his Ma know he's out; she should send him to 

school 
To learn that he 'd starve without money. 



A SOCIAL DRAMA. 97 

Third Voice. Well, I'm glad that she 's oft^ For 
one, I can't see 
But he's good as she is, after all; — 
Come in when the wedding is over, and we 
Will make the new bride a first call. 

With a smile of assent the young lady withdrew, 
But the scci"et, pent up in her mind, 
Struggled hai'd to get out, — so she call'd on Miss Time 
To help her to keep it confin'd. 

Refrain — 

But Lucilla is thoughtful, and has tried to pray 
For the weal of her daughter, who marries to-day. 

The Wedding. 

Fair and bright, on the wedding night, 
Appeai"'d Lucilla's daughter. 
And a form in Fashion's dress and grace 
Stood by her at the altar. 

Her heart was glad — but her mother's sad — 

Sad with apprehension. 
That things may be in futurity, 

That she never dar'd to mention. 

With a smile and tear the daughter dear 

Salutes her foithful mother; 
While her hand and heart, till death may part, 
Is promised to another. 
5 



98 LUCILLA. 

Her father laugh'd as the wine he quaff'd, — 
'Twas more than mere pretenses, — 

For he felt that he was now to be 
Released from her expenses. 

Refrain — 

We may not tell, with a wizard, 

The history of that daughter; 
The earth has woes, and her husband knows 

The reason why he sought her. 





SCENE IX. 

Death and Burial of LucillcHs Husband. 

How sad the hist'ry of a grov'ling life, — 
The sensuous excitements, — selfish schemes 
Of an immortal mind, that knows no thought, — 
No motive, — no desire beyond the bounds 
Of this gross earth. The dregs of life to such 
Are bitterness and ashes in the Soul. 

Lucilla's husband near'd the close of life: 
Her woman's heart still true, but tried, 
Alleviated as she could his pains, — 
Forgave the past, and bore in quietness 
Murmurs of discontent against herself. 
The doctors, and the providence of God. 
At length his spirit fled ; and the cold clay 
Bore indications diat the soul was seized 
And startled into teiTor, as it passed 
The veil that opens to eternity.* 

*See Dr. Nelson on impressions made on the features by the last thoughts 
of the dying. 



lOO LUCILLA. 

The funeral pomp was solemn and prolong'd, 
— The carriages of wealthy families — 
Some tenanted, some tenantless within, 
Were joined by a long line of purchas'd pomp 
And empty vehicles. 'Twas Fashion's show 
Of worldly ostentation, even in death — 
Yea, in the grip of death — O painful sight! 
Fashion grins ghastly in funereal garb, 
And mocks true sorrow by hypocrisy. 

A monument was reared whose epitaph 
Spoke of an upright man, — a husband kind, — 
An unexampled parent, and a friend 
To every good endeavor. Thus he sleeps, 
His mould'ri ng ashes cover'd by a lie. 

But the Recording Angel, in the book 
Of doom, reversed the epitaph, and wrote 
This final record for the sleeper's soul : 

^ sorbib, — proub, — rebellious minb, — confirm'b 
|« selfishness, ^ealeb anb beliber'b xip 
So bie l^e seconb )ient^. ^©Igii. 'A/jti^y. 

The funeral o'er, the mourning family 
Consid'ring whether all things have been done, 
In due accordance with their dignity. 
Thus spake, in accents sharp, Lucilla's son : 



A SOCIAL DRAMA. lOI 

Edward. The Perrys were not here. — Our girls 
went down, 
On a wet clay, to 'tend their daughter's mairiage ; 
They're wond'rous big since they have moved up town; 
They should have come, or sent along their carriage. 

Aug. I'm really glad that Col. G. was here; 
It shows he is a fast and real friend. 

Ed. They say he's now almost a millionaire. — 
I wonder why the Pitkins didn't attend. — 
We'll let them go ; — our father often said 
A fi-iend in life and death is hard to find. 
= — The funeral bills must all be promptly paid; — 
And mother, you must try to be resigned. 

But Lucilla was silent, — her thoughts seem'd to 
seek 
Bright spots in his life who was gone; 
And a tear trick'led down o'er her pale faded cheek; 
For she felt that she now was alone 1 




SCENE X. 

Lucilla's Widowhood^ Illness afid Death, 

Thoughtful, sedate and lone, 

Our aged friend appears; 
Yet, dignified, she walkest down 

Into the vale of years. 

She does not often dwell 

Upon the past in life; 
For there were scenes she may not tell 

In her hist'r}' as a wife. 

And when her mind surveys 

The future, she has fears; 
And often to herself she says, 

" This world's a vale of tears." 

But ere the worst was known 

Of the evil yet to come, 
Heaven call'd Lucilla to lie down 

And rest in her narrow home. 

The Fever spirit call'd away 

The weary pilgrim, sad and gray. — 



A SOCIAL DRAMA. 

Declining, slowly, clay by day. 

She sank into the tomb. 

But still, in sadness, sickness, death, — 
When the breast heav'd with lab'ring breath, 
She thought, but spake not of the path 

That led her into gloom. 

When i-eason was enthron'd she thought 
Intensely of her future lot, — 
'•'•Is there a second death or not?" 

And oftentimes she said 

She thought God would in mei'cy bear 
With those who suft'er'd so much here; — 
She wish'd to hope, and yet had fear 

In ref'rence to the dead. 

At times her soul look'd up to heaven 
And uttered prayer to be forgiven; 
Then, wand'ring, thought she saw a raven 
Flitting across the room. 

Then fever'd dreams bro't youthful days, — 
In dreams she walk'd in pleasant ways. 
And smiled and utter'd words of praise 

About a name unknown. 

One evening she, with lab'ring breath, 
Seem'd conscious of the approach of death, 



103 



I04 



I.UCII.T.A. 



And imuimu'cl, — " O, for living faith 

To trust ill God's dear Son!" 

'Twas Sabbath morn, when round her bed 

The whisper passed, — " Dear mother's dead ! " 
***** 

Beside her husband they have made 
LuciUa's sepulchre. 

Thus ends the tale, — and while we say 
Anathema to Fashion's sway. 
That led her steps from peace away. 

We'll drop a tear for her. 




A SOCIAL DRAMA. I05 



NOTES. 

[A] 

It is not true of every wealthy family that their offspring become ener- 
vated in person and morals. Some parents perceive the tendency, and its 
causes, and will not permit their children to be confined on school seats, 
and crammed with school literature, such as mental arithmetic and a half 
dozen geographies, most of the years that physical development should be 
secured by actual exercise that requires muscular exertion. Some men 
begin, also, tcTthink of posterity in their matrimonial arrangements. The 
offspring of one of the sons of John Jacob Astor, who has just married a 
young woman, fresh and strong in person and in heart, will be known as 
men and women on the Hudson, when that of the other brother, should 
he marry a debilitated fashionable of the second generation, will have gone 

to . He may escape, likewise, the other evil of the false social life 

and burdens of American fashion, which is more adverse to happiness than 
the life of a coal miner. 

[B] 

Operatic Music — In the " Dumfries Album " Thomas Carlyle writes : 

" Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among 
the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to 
the Infinite. We look for moments across the cloudy eleinents into the 
eternal Sea of Light, when song leads and inspires us. But, good heavens I 
from a psalm of Asaph to a seat in the London opera, in Haymarket — 
what a road have men travelled I The waste tliat is made in music is prob- 
abl)' the saddest of all our squanderings of God's gifts. Music has, for a 
long time past, been avowedly mad, divorced from sense and fact, and 
associated with fiction and delirium only. To sing the praise of God v/as 
always, and will always be the business of the singer; he who forsakes 
that gift, and sings the praise of chaos, what shall we say of him? 

" When 1 think that music too is condemned to be mad, and to burn her- 
self on such a funeral pile, your celestial opera-house grows dark and 
infernal to me. Behind its glitter stalks the shadow of eternal death 
through it. I look not up to the Divine eye as Richter has it, but down 
into the bottomless eye-socket — not upward towards God, heaven and the 
tlirone of truth ; but too truly, down toward falsity, vanity and tlie dwelling 
place of everlasting despair." 

[C] 
Hannah More on the Theatre. 

"That exquisite sense of feeling which God implanted in the heart as a 
stimulus to quicken us in relieving the miseries of others is thus perverted, 
and learns to consider self as not the agent but the object of compassion. 
Tenderness is made an excuse for being hard-hearted, and instead of dry- 
ing the weeping eyes of others, this false delicacy reserves its own selfish 
teai-s for the more elegant and less cxjiensive sorrows of the melting novel 
4iid the pathetic tragedy." 
r* 




THE SWAN ON LAKE LEMAN. 



Geneva, Switzerland, June i6, 1854. 
Rev. J. C. HoLBROOK, Chicago : 

My Dear Sir, — The following lines were written almost 
inipi'otnphi, improved a little, of course, by subsequent re- 
vision. Allow me to introduce them, by some references to 
the occurrences by which they were occasioned, and by> 
some exposition of the allusions which they contain. 

Well, then, after passing a week in Paris, a city without 
a Sabbath, and a people without principles — " I took the 
rail," as they say in England, for Geneva. I wished to. 
spend some time in the midst of the mountain and lake 
scenery of this beautiful region — the birth-place of Con- 
tinental Puritanism, and the life and death-place of John 
Calvin, the vigilant and discriminating reviver of Augus- 
tinian Theology. 

At Chalons we took the diligence — and if I might bur- 
lesque a phrase of Virgil's — I would say, that a diligence 
\s a. " Jiwvt't ei cicrnam niovabity We got nothing to eat 
from five o'clock P.M., at Dijon, until we crossed the Jura 
Mountains, at two P.M. the next day. This, with the talk 
of a voluble Swiss lady, who spoke about as miserable 
English as I did wretched French, and the unmitigated 
trundling of the heavy and awkward conveyance, disturbed 



lOS THE SWAN ON LAKE LEMAN. 

the balance of health, so that I got to my hotel in Geneva 
with a sick headache. I rose early the next morning, re- 
covered but debilitated. 

No one was moving upon Lake Leman, when I left my 
hotel on the Grand (2i-iay. I hired a shallop for two and a 
half francs, and rowed away out on the quiet bosom of 
this most lovely lake of Geneva. The pure morning air 
refreshed and strengthened me. Numerous swans live 
upon the lake. The inhabitants care for them, and fix 
floating baskets in the water where they may feed. It 
seems, of all waters in the world, the most appropriate 
place for them. The blessed Creator doeth all things well. 
He arranges by harmonious adaptations the animated 
species with the physical conditions of nature. 

One of these swans left a group which were floating near 
the shore, and followed my boat out upon the lake. .The 
early morning ; the mountain and lake scenery; the fact 
that some of the most eminent minds of the world, skepti- 
cal and believing, have come to reside on the borders of 
Lake Leman, under the shadow of these lofty mountains; 
and the further fact that intellect rather than love is mani- 
fested even in the works of the old reformers, suggested the 
allusions which appear in the following — 



LINES, 

Suggested by the incident of a white swan following the shallop 

in which I rowed out early one morning upon the 

Lake of Geneva, in Switzerland. 



I. 

Gracefully, calmly, thou glidest on, 
O'er the lake's blue bosom, thou lovely swan ; 
There is no one abroad but you and I, 
On this deep blue lake, 'neath this bright blue sky. — 



THE SWAN ON LAKE LEMAN. IO9 

II. 

Afar on the verge of the water I see 
Thy companions are floatuig, but thou art with me; 
With thine ermine breast, and thy cahii, clear eye, 
Thou dost follow my shallop noiselessly. 

HI. 

'Tis fitting a bird so graceful should lave 
Her snow-white plumes in this crystal wave: — 
But why hast thou left thy companions to glide, 
So early this morning, with me o'er the tide.-* 

IV, 

Perhaps, like me, thou hast come to dwell 
On the grandeur and beauty of nature: — 'tis well: 
The sublime sits enthron'd on yon mountain's brow, 
And the lofty in nature impresses me now. 

V. 
The gifted minds of the earth have sought 
These scenes, and hung over them garlands of thought; 
And the names of the mighty are here enshrined. 
Who have reigned like kings o'er the realms of mind. 

VI. 

This grandeur of nature can lift the mind 
'Till the soul flows out to the unconfin'd; 
But emotions that melt into Mercy's tear 
Are not impressed on the spirit here : — 
For even Calvin forgot to prove 
That error is conquered alone by love. 



no THE SWAN ON LAKE LEMAN. 

VII. 

Here free and brilliant rang Byron's song, 
But defiant and cold as the jDeaks of Blanc; 
Here Gibbon could doubt — Voltaire could sneer, 
Rousseau and DeStael were skeptics here. 

VIII. 

But still serenely thou glidest on 
In the wake of my shallop, thou white-plumed swan; 
Well, come, fair swimmer, my symbol be 
Of life, and of death, and of destiny : — 
May my bosom the tint of thy plumage take. 
And my life be as bright as thy course o'er the lake; 
And in death may my faith be subdued and free 
As the notes of thy dying melody. * * 

So end the verses. Perhaps it may not be uninteresting 
to add that upon the shores of this lake, Byron wrote the 
Prisoner of Chillon. The old castle by this name, where 
Bonnevard was confined, still stands in good repair. It is 
built upon a rock in the lake ; the water on the lake side 
being, it is said, forty fathoms deep. It is separated from 
the mainland by a draw-bridge. The ring in the wall by 
which the prisoner was confined, still exists ; and the im- 
pressions of his feet on the stone floor, in the little circle 
which he trod for weary years, are still visible. The library 
which Calvin founded is still in Geneva ; the house where 
he died is still standing ; and the place of his grave is 
pointed out, although he forbade the Genevans to mark the 
spot where he was buried. 

In the beautiful chateau and villages around the lake, are 
the residences where lived and wrote many eminent men — 
theologians, poets, historians., and naturalists. Among 



THE SWAN OX LAKE LEMAN. Ill 

these may be named Calvin, Feral, Cassabon, Rousseau, 
Necker, DeStael, Byron, Gibbon, Beranger, and last, though 
not least, Agassiz, now a citizen of our own country. 

I have spent a quiet Sabbath in Geneva, and worshiped 
in the chapel of Dr. Mearle. The service was exceedingly 
simple — the people evidently reverent and devout ; — and 
although I could understand but little of what the preacher 
said, yet there was unction in the manner of the service, 
especially in the united singing of the whole congregation, 
which was refreshing to one long separated from the simple 
service of the Protestant sanctuary. 

To-morrow we start for the mountains, to look dov/n 
upon the world from the snow-clad peaks of Mount Blanc. 
You know — 

" Mount Blanc is the monarch of mountains — 
They crowned him long ago, 
On a throne of rock — in a robe of cloud, 
And a diadem of snow." 

Adieu ! . 





'r^^Xt*^ 



A PASTORAL: 



THE HONEYMOON IN A WESTERN COTTAGE, 



In early days, when life was in its spring, 
And scarce twelve summer suns had roll'd away, 
When Time delay'd, but Hope, with joyous wing, 
Led on the sage, and chided his delay. 

My home was in the bosom of a vale — 
A peaceful valley fir removed from strife ; 
Where dwell'd the subjects of my humble tale — 
A youthful farmer and his meek-c}ed wife. 

Their cottage stood upon a rise of ground 
That gently sloped down to a bubbling spring, 
Near which, on willow branches hanging round, 
The whip-poor-will at eve was wont to sing. 

At noon the sun a balmy fragrance drew 
From many a shrub in which the mock- bird sung; 



114 A PASTORAL. 

And Morning-glories, bath'd in honey dew, 
Their modest bells around their windows hung. 

Across the field, behind the cottage, rose 
A verdant hill, upon whose shady side 
The wild grape cluster'd, and the flock would doze, — 
Or browse upon the boughs, at eventide. 

On quiet evenings, when the winds were still, 
The spring brook wandei-'d with a murmuring sound, 
And kiss'd the grass, and leap'd and dimpled till 
It met the stream down in the meadow ground. 

One afternoon, upon a Sabbath day 
Of summer time, the cottagers array'd 
In Sunday vestments, took tlie flow'ry way 
Through garden walks, down to a cooling shade. 

Kind conversation whil'd away the hours, 
Till lengthen'd pauses bade the subject close; 
The air redolent with the breath of flowers, 
Beguiled sweet Mary into brief repose. 

When Edward look'd to read in Mary's eyes 
The meditations that absorb'd her mind — 
No shade of thought upon her features lies — 
Her eyes are veiled — her head in sleep reclin'd. 

His thoaghts went back to scenes of early youth, — 
How oft her smile — his sorrows had beguil'd; 



THE HONEYMOON IN A WESTERN COTTAGE. II5 

He felt a joy — to think that of a truth 
Has Maiy lov'd me, even from a child. 

In retrospect his mental eye could see, 
At noon of harvest time, the reapers meet, 
Under the shadow of a spreading tree, 
From the warm sun-rays a secure retreat. 

Again his neighbors sat beneath the shade, 
Round a white linen spread upon the ground ; 
Rude mirth was banish'd, for a niodest maid 
The harvest cake and coffee pass'd around. 

He thought how oft would diffidence disclose 
Emotions he to tenderness could trace; 
And vievv'd his wife, to see if in repose 
These sweet impressions linger'd in her face. 

He thought of their young love, and all the wiles 
Which first the tender passion had confess'd, 
How oft he triumph'd in approving smiles. 
How oft anxiety had fiU'd his breast. 

When first the anxious question, "Will you bless! — • 
Will you be mine ? — O Mary ! — dearest ! — best ! " — 
The flurried answer, — " Oh ! — why ! — Edward ! — 

yes!" 
Blushing and weeping on his happy breast. 



Il6 A PASTORAL. 

He press'd his lips with fervor, ere he spoke, 
Upon lier brow of pure carnation white, 
She look'tl upon him kindly as she woke. 
And felt her heart alive with love's delight. 

The sun was setting o'er the western hill ; 
Nature the hush of Sabbath seem'd to keep; 
The voice of ev'ry living thing was still, 
Save those we love to wake us from a sleep. 

Down in the distance of the verdant vale. 
The coming bell betimes was heard to beat; 
The robins warbled — the laconic quail 
Was calling for his partner in the wheat. 

The voice of doves — like the bewild'ring sighs 
Of some lone heart, when others talk of bliss, 
Was heard to fall — and Mary rais'd her eyes — 
— " Oh what a blessed Sabbath eve is this! " 

They rose and loiter'd In the garden ground, 
A spot that had engag'd their mutual care; 
Neat beds of vegetables fring'd around 
By Violet and Marygold were there. 

They rcach'd the cottage as the colors grew 
Bright and more lambent in the glowing west. 
And Four-o' clocks tlieir bosoms opcn'd to 
Receive fresh dew drops in their downy breast. 



THE irONKYMOON IN A WESTKRNf COTTAGE. II7 

An hour was pass'd in noticing the truth 
Of many things their piLstor hud to say; 
And, just en /)assanf, of c. stranger youth, 
That sat in Capt. Ellsworth's pew that day. 

They read a chapter in the holy book — 
A prayer was said for guidance and for grace — 

Asleep as pillow-mates — kind angels look 
On their repose, aud smile zvhen they embrace. 





APOSTROPHE TO THE DIVINE HEART. 



Infinite Life — Divine, Essential Love! 
Self-vital power of the All-soul above! 

With rev' rent heart, I would draw nigher, 

And seek subduing, purifying fire 
From off the altar, where the Sacred Heart 
Throbb'd with life-giving energy. Impart 
Througli thy self-sacrifice, love-life to my spirit, — 
Life touch'd by Christ's humanity and merit; 
That thus through soul and body, such as mine, 
The Holy Ghost may breathe a life divine. 

Oh! thou crush'd victim! Reason fain would see 
Something of that amazing mystery, — 
The Love-Power struggling for humanity, 
Life of my life springing from death of Thee: 

The cup that might not pass 

Till Innocence should bear 

The taunt ! — the thorn ! — the cross ! — 



APOSTROPHE TO THE DIVINE HEART. II 9 

The piercing nails! — the spear! — 
Forth from that agony — deep as eternity 
Outflows the blood-chrism of power and purity! 

Oh, Thou, All-Merciful ! — too deep for me, 
That rent heart's wailing cry " lama sabacthani ! " 
The cup of suffering drank at Calvary. — 
•With filial spirit and with rev'rent mind. 

Father, I would look up 
And ask with meekness and with soul resigned, 
What was that cup? 

Faith kneels with reason, — all I can not see; 
But I believe Christ tasted death for me. 
This faith through all the heart sheds love abroad, 
And surely one that loveth knoweth God ! 




OUR CHILDREN. 



Mrs. Dr, R — -: 

Dear Madam. — Although we have no offspring, as you 
know, yet we have furnished a home for many children and 
youth ; and have endeavored to rear our part of the great 
human family. We had a company of printer boys with 
us at Hudson, and again another company at Chicago. 
These, with two young women, who grew from girlhood 
to womanhood with us — making twelve in all — we en- 
deavored to care for, as guardians should care for orphan 
children. Wife and I were orphans ourselves; and in ad- 
dition to these twelve, we adopted and gave our own name 
to seven other orphan children. Of the twelve first named 
all but one professed to be disciples of Christ, while they 
were with us. One is now a minister of the Gospel. Two 
are lawyers. One is a physician. One has been a mer- 
chant, but has failed. One is an editor. Of the others we 
have lost the track of their history. Of the young women 
— both married in our home. One with her husband is 
now in heaven — the other was married to the editor of a 
Republican newspaper. He subsequently entered the 
Union army in the war against slavery, and fell as captain 
at the head of his company. His widow we have endeav- 
ored to care for, and she still resides near us. We aimed 



OUR CHILDREN. 121 

to fit them all for usefulness in life, and in a good measure 
our efforts have hot been in vain. 

Of our seven adopted children, two died in infancy. One, 
after being reared from infancy to eleven years of age, was 
returned, by request of a relative, to friends and fortune, as 
we supposed. Of two others, the grandchildren of one of 
the oldest Methodist ministers in the West — one of these, 
dear little Rhoda, has gone to heaven ; the other lives near 
us, and is an officer of the new County of Benzie, in the 
State of Michigan. Two are still with us — a young woman 
of eighteen, and a little boy of eight years. The following 
memorials of some of these children, with the annexed lit- 
tle poems, were occasioned by incidents in their life or 
death. They are family memorials ; but there is nothing in 
them which a friendly eye, as we know yours is, may not 
see. 

We are old now, and our endeavors to rear and educate 
orphan children must close. May the Divine Father of 
orphans bless our imperfect efforts. We feel deeply the 
imperfections which have marked our efforts in this respect; 
and we do not desire you, or any one, to suppose that it 
was pure Gospel benevolence that produced the endeavors 
we have made. Our object in retaining these brief family 
memorials in a published volume is to invite othei^s to 
labors of love, when we can labor no longer. 



LITTLE JAMES AND NEW RICHMOND. 

In the church where my ministry began, one of the dea- 
cons was a pious and sensitive young man, whose wife 
was pious, affectionate and diffident as himself. He had 
expended his little means in the purchase of a business 
house and lot in the new village of Akron, Ohio, which he 
6 



122 OUR CHILDREN. 

and others hoped would some day become a city of con- 
siderable importance. Their hopes, like thousands of 
others' in 1836-38, were, for the time, disappointed, and 
consequently a measure of pecuniary embarrassment ensued 
which was a great trial to the family. 

When I left the village to remove to Cincinnati, they 
had one child, some two or three years old. Subsequently 
an infant was born to them. The mother lingered a few 
weeks and died. Soon after, their eldest child was laid 
beside its mother in the " noiseless neighborhood." The 
father, ill in body and mind, was left alone with his feeble 
babe. About this time we made a visit to some of our old 
friends in Akron, and at the earnest solicitation of our 
bereaved friend, my wife took the infant to rear and care 
for as our own. We gave our little adopted charge the 
new name of James Hickman Walker. 

Our poor friend remained alone in his desolate house, 
unwell in body and sad of heart. After a time he grew 
more faint and ill, and was seldom seen out of his dwell- 
ing. One day he had not been noticed by any one; and 
the next morning, when friends knocked and received no 
answer, they entered his room ; and he was dead. He 
had, probably, after a day of illness, died alone. His 
head reclined over the side of his bed, and he seemed to 
have fallen, without much struggle, into that sleep that 
knows no waking. 

Poor brother Hickman ! I i-ejoice to think that in those 
lonely days, and on that dying night, one ray of comfort 
from earth, besides what descended from heaven, may 
have mingled with thy gloom. I know that you had con- 
fidence that your little boy would be cared for with parental 
affection. 

We were then living in the retired village of New Rich- 
mond. The village was on the Ohio river, near Cincinnati. 
Many years before prosperous churches had existed in the 
place ; but they had for some time been afflicted, in all 
their denominations, with a profitless ministry. Some 
of them had been good preaching machines, educated in 



OUR CHILDREN. 1 23 

theological seminaries until they had grown out of all sym- 
pathy with the masses of the people. Others were sectarians, 
or selfish eccentrics, who sought to attract personal notice 
and laudation. So the influence of the churches was lost; 
but faith still lived in the hearts of a few faithful ones, who 
prayed over the desolation of Zion. Here, during our resi- 
dence, regenerating power was given to the truth, which 
changed the whole aspect of society in the place. 

To this place we had retired in order to re-write the MSS. 
of my first book, "The Philosophy of the Plan of Salva- 
tion." Here we brought our adopted infant. He lived 
with us about six months, — seemed to become a healthy 
and a happy child, and then died. His disease was induced 
by the poison of soothing syrups and other opiates, those 
destructive poisons that had been given to him before we 
accepted him as our charge.* I held him in my arms 
when he fell into his long sleep. I did not know he was 
dying. He seemed to sleep too profoundly, and I tried to 
arouse him ; but he never waked again. 

Our home was upon the banks of the Ohio. Two friends 
came with a skiff. My wife and I took the little coffin 
between us, and were rowed up the river to the village 
cemetery. Beneath a tree, by the river-side, repose the 
remains of our first adopted. We set a little marble stone 
at the head of his grave, and left him sleeping where the 
departed of the village lie. 

In subsequent years, incidents suggested the following 
lines : 



♦There are no soothing- sjTups that do not poison children. Physicians 
may, perhaps, give Ihem in single prescriptions in certain cases of acute 
disease; but no cliild can take bottles of these deleterious compounds (got- 
ten up usually by unprincipled druggists in the name of some woman) 
without injury to some of the vital functions of the child. Much of the 
debility and nervousness of the adults of our time, esp^cially in the cities, 
is produced by the narcotic poisons fed to them when they were babes. 
Physicians are aware of tliese facts, and should forbid the use of narcotic 
medicines in families where they practice. 



124 OUR CHILDREN. 

FUNERAL OF LITTLE JAMES. 

In our little boat there were but few — 

Two friends, my wife and I. 
The stream was calm and the sky was blue, 

And the oars dipp'd silently; 
So mournfully, and quietly 

We glided o'er the stream : 
'Twas long ago, and it seemeth now, 

Like a remember'd dream. 

A little coffin near us lay, 

Between my wife and me, — 
Her mournful eyes were resting there. 

But dimly she could see; 
For the dew of tears suflused her eyes. 

And that affected me: — 
The oars-men looked away from us 

And rowed more silently. * * 

But steadily our boat moved on 
To the home of the village dead : 

('Tis a sylvan spot on the river brink 
Where the villagers are laid,) 

In a shady nook, by a locust tree, 
Where Ohio's waters lave, 

Our orphan sleeps his dreamless sleep — 
. The people know his grave. 



OUR CHILDREN. 1 35 

And we hear, they say, when they bear away 

Some one to their silent bed — 
" Let us go and see, by the locust tree, 

Where the orphan child was laid, — 
'Twas the foster child of a minister, 

Cherish'd and lov'd full well ; — 
They set that stone by his little grave, 

And went for hence to dwell. 

" Old people often speak of them, 

My father often prays 
To see again the Spirit's power 

Experienced in those days. 
He often wonders where they dwell. 

And wishes he could know ; 
I, too, remember much they said — 

But it seems so long ago." 



LINES BY MY WIFE, 

ON THE DEATH OF A FOSTER-CHILD IN CHICAGO. 

We dwelled in Chicago, where I bought a lot and house 
near the present center of the city, for eight hundred dol- 
lars. At that early day (1847) empty wagons sometimes 
sunk in the street before my office, and could not be extri- 



126 OUR CHILDREN. 

cated without assistance. There were no orphan asylum^ 
in the city in those days. 

My wife was one of a society of ladies, of which the lat^ 
Mrs. Wright was president, who loolced after and personally.. 
cared for the poor in the winter. She was directed to a 
Protestant German family where the inmates were poor and 
sick. The mother in the family had become insane. There 
was an infant in the family that was so ill that it was not 
expected to live. We brought home the suffering child, in 
order that we might care for it until its sufferings should be 
over. My wife watched it with a mother's care and affec- 
tion, and after many weeks of watching by day and night, 
it grew better, and survived until about a year old, when it 
died. 

Its last illness was painful. It died in the arms of its 
adopted mother. Just preceding its death, before the last 
agony came on, I was called to look at the child. A pecu- 
liar change was noticed in its features. Its face seemed to 
glow with an expression of peace and sweetness which were 
strange and affecting. It was a hallowed aspect, that can 
not be described, unlike anything we had before noticed. 
To this my wife alludes in her verses. But the hallowed 
aspect subsided, and the death agony came on. The strug- 
gle was severe, but probably more consciously painful to 
the living than the dying. Its little teeth lacerated its 
tongue. It clasped convulsively the hand of its foster- 
mother, and the blood stained its white lips. It was a great 
relief to see the agonized little one still in death. Who 
will resolve the mysteries of such a death ! 

A few friends came in the next day. The babe lay in its 
coffin, and a few delicate flowers were in its tiny hands. 
Prayer was said. A closed carriage drove to our door. 
We took with us the little coffin, and accompanied by the 
father and sister of the child, we laid its remains in the 
Chicago cemetery. 

Shall not my wife see again that spirit which looked out 
on her with angelic expression before the death struggle ? I 
believe she will. 



OUR CHILDREN. 



127 




The following lines were written by her in memory of the 
death scene : 



LINES. 



Sweet babe, thy lips are rosy yet, 

And thev are warm when press'd to mine, 
Could death his seal of silence set, 

And yet the soul beam foi;th like thine? 



128 OUR CHILDREN. 

The dewy softness of thy cheek 

Is so unhke death's chilly damp, 
The Parian brow and look so meek, 

So pure and calm, — 'tis heaven's own stamp. 

Such mystic sweetness of thy brow, 

As if a seraph's beaming eye 
Had caught thine own, and ling'ring now, 

Were beck'ning thee toward the sky. 

Death's icy touch is stealing on, 

His cold, unyielding grasp I know; 

Thy tiny hand still clasps my own, 

'Twould seem thou 'rt not in haste to go. 

Fair one, they 've rob'd thee for the grave. 
In thy small hands the pale flowers bloom, 

One silken lock Is all we crave. 
Ere thou art coffin'd for the tomb. 

We press our lips once more to thine. 
And now one last, fond look is given, 

Thy coffin to the tomb consign'd. 

And thy j^ure spirit dwells in heaven. 



OUR CHILDREN. 1 29 



MAGGIE. 

In the early days of my residence in Chicago, a gentle- 
man sang in the choir of a church where I often preached 
the gospel. He was a clerk in a government office, and 
known to me as an active promoter of the temperance re- 
form. He was descended from an old and respectable 
family in Pennsylvania, my native State. His ancestors 
had been distinguished in the Revolutionary struggle ; he 
had himself been educated at the West Point Military 
Academy, and his family name is associated with piety and 
science in the West and Southwest. 

He married a young woman of unusual personal attrac- 
tions, but destitute both of intellectual and moral culture. 
She did not suit his friends, hence he and his wife separated 
themselves from old associations, and came, at an early 
time, to seek their fortune in the new City of Chicago. 
Here he died, leaving his wife with three children and little 
or no pecuniary resources. The two eldest boys were taken 
by relatives, the babe, a little girl, was left with its mother, 
a woman without resources, who managed as one without 
moral conviction, and without counsel, might be supposed 
to do. The child, of about a year old, was often left in a 
room, locked close, for a whole day, suffering by neglect 
and hunger. Some who knew the father interposed, and 
we pitied and adopted the child. 

We knew our little charge had respectable friends, but 
we knew not where they lived, and heard nothing from 
them for nine years. During this time the little girl was 
cared for as a daughter, and educated in literature, music, 
and useful labor suitable to her age ; and she grew with us 
to be a graceful and comely child, of about eleven years of 
age. 

About a year before we parted with her, we heard from 
her friends. One of them now desired to adopt the child 
as her charge. Meanwhile she had, by the decease of her 
6* 



130 OUR CHILDREN, 

grandfather, inherited, as we were informed, some prop- 
erty, and there were expectations of a large fortune by the 
favorable termination of a law suit then pending in the 
State of Virginia. Under all the circumstances, trusting to 
the known moral worth of her relatives, we concluded that 
it might be best for her that we should take her to her 
ncvvly-found friends and fortune. 

She bade farewell to her adopted mother, and an affect- 
ing adieu to Rhoda, her little foster-sister, and I took her 
to her adopted friends in another State, with the under- 
standing that she was frequently to visit us and perpetuate 
the ties of affection that bound to us, and to each other, the 
two sisters, Maggie and Rhoda. The promised visits were 
not permitted. The two were beautiful in their childhood. 
They resembled each other, and loved more than sisters 
usually do. During the absence of my wife I had watched 
Maggie in a long and severe illness, and had come to regard 
her with more affection than any child we had adopted, ex- 
cept Rhoda. We took her a suffering and friendless child; 
we parted with her an heiress of some expectation and 
many friends. We gave her in infancy the name of my 
mother. I have visited her twice since she left us. The 
aunt who adopted her is dead. She is now married to a 
gentleman of character. We have often remembered and 
prayed for Maggie, the orphaned and injured babe, who 
found friends and fortune just when the days of her child- 
hood were over. 

On the day before she left our home, among other gifts, 
we gave her a new album, in which were memorials from 
the family, and the following 



LINES. 

Maggie, adopted daughter, — fare thee well, 
Fair foster-chikl, — niay God be with thee now — 
How long and earnestly we 've cared for thee — 



OUR CHir.DUEX. 131 

How we have watch'd thy bed in anxious hours, 

When fever flush'd thy brow — how we have pray'd 

And labor'd to induce in thee a love 

Of right and truth, and every winning grace, 

No mortal knows. From infancy till now 

Tliou hast been daughter in our hearts and home. 

We baptized thee into the blessed name 
Of the Most High —The triune Deity — 
We gave to thee in the baptismal rite 
The name of one in heaven — One who watch'd 
Over our infancy with tend'rer care 
Than we could watch o'er thine — 
Oh Margaret — may thy life be true as hers 
To truth — to friends — to \irtuc, and to God. 

But fare thee well — thou goest forth from us 
To a new home. — New int' rests and new hopes 
Will soon possess thee; and early maidenhood, 
With its fresh life — its impulse, and its meed 
Of triumph and temptation, arc at hand — 
God save thee in that hour! — If it bring 
Peril to tempt thy virtue or thy faith, 
Tliink then of Christ, of duty, and of prayer ; 
Think of the lessons we have taught to thee. 
And thou shalt conquer by the grace of Him 
Who loves the orphan. 



132 OUK CHILDREN. 

Farewell, Maggie dear : - 
The race of life 's before thee — other friends 
Will aid thee by the way, and seek thy good; 
And oft in hours of silence God will hear 
Our prayer at Mercy's altar, that thy life 
May be a life of duty, which shall fit 
Thee for a home in heaven. — Fare thee well. 



RHODA. 



This name recalls the memory of two of the sweetest 
girls that we ever sheltered in our home. The first a sister 
of my wife, who was with us from girlhood until she was 
married. The other was the child of an intelligent man, 
the son of a pioneer Methodist minister. He had removed, 
as many others did, to Chicago, to improve his circum- 
stances, but instead of prosperity, there came death and 
adverse fortune. The mother having died, and the other 
members of the family being sick and destitute, we found 
the infant in the care of a family with whom the parents 
had resided as boarders. There was no one to take charge 
of the child. She had been tied in a little chair, which, by 
some mishap, had been overturned against a hot stove, 
and her face was severely burned. My wife was informed 
of the circumstances, and went to see the suffering child. 
She felt that she ought not to leave her where she could 
have little care, and had her brought to our house, with 
the intention of caring for her until her wounds were 
healed, and then returning her to the care of her father, 
who was still sick, and unable to care for her. 

After she was restored, we returned her to her natural 
-guardian, and sent her daily a supply of good milk. 



OUR CHILDREN. I33 

Through a kind-heaited girl in the family, my wife learned 
that the milk was not given, as we desired, but instead, a 
bit of fat pork was placed in the infant's mouth, and from 
this she drew about all the nourishment she received. We 
had become attached to our little charge while her wound 
was healing; and, although we had adopted another infant 
nearly her own age, we concluded, with her father's per- 
mission and relinquishment, to bring her back and adopt 
her likewise as a member of our family. She was carried 
to her new home in a blanket, and was fostered and cared 
for during the whole of her brief but happy life. She grew 
in our family to be a sweet, affectionate, and interesting 
child of seventeen years. She sang very sweetly, accom- 
panying her voice on the instrument, and had knowledge 
of useful branches of labor and study. But the angel of 
death came to our dwelling without any indication of his 
approach. She had seemed unwell for a day or two; and 
her thought seemed like one preparing to die, although she 
certainly had no impression that the time of her departure 
was at hand. She seemed more thoughtful than usual. 
She read in her Testament, and turned down a leaf with 
a mark at the first verses of the fifth chapter of 2nd 
Corinthians. She likewise read the biography of Miiller 
in the Life of Trust. Her heart seemed to sympathize 
with the most spiritual thought, and with thought of the 
life to come. She had a stanzas or two of verses which 
spoke of the meeting of friends in a future life. These she 
copied and put them into a book belonging to her brother, 
which he would see when he returned from the war. She 
likewise placed a black ribbon where a friend would see it. 
She retired to her room ill but hoping soon to be in her 
usual health. That night she slept with her mother, who 
dreamed, or rather as she thought, while waking, she saw a 
red flag held out over Rhoda, where she was sleeping. My 
wife was startled ; but feared danger to myself, never think- 
ing of Rhoda. Next morning she was quite ill, and left 
her room no more until she was moved to be habited for 
the grave. 



134 OUR CHILDREN. 

She was ill but three days. I was absent in the city 
of Sandusky, where we aided others in labor till we freed 
from pecuniary embarrassment, and established in spiritual 
prosperity an evangelical church of Christ. The telegraph 
called me home ; but I had to tarry for the cars one 
weary night, during which I dreamed that I attended a 
wedding in a neighboring family, where there was an 
adopted daughter about Khoda's one, and age, who had 
been her companion. Before we bore her away from 
her adopted liome, her school companions formed a circle 
around her coffin, and sang the sweet hymn, the cadences 
of which were broken by constant sobbing : 

1. " Sister, thou wert mild and lovely. 

Gentle as the summer breeze, 
Pleasant as the air of evening 
When it floats among the trees. 

2. " Peaceful be thy silent slumber, 

Peaceful in the grave so low ; 
Thou no more will join our number. 
Thou no more our songs shalt know." 

We raised a little marble obelisk over her grave, on one 
side of which we inscribed some memorial lines ; on the 
other, on a raised oval were inscribed the words, 

THE GRAVE OF RHODA WALKER. 

There sleeps, in her white robes, our best beloved child. 
After her departure — in the twilight one evening — sitting on 
the portico of our dwelling — the pleasantest in its site and 
surroundings in the city where we lived — the following 
verses took form in my mind, suggested by surrounding 
objects and incidents : 



OUR CHILDREX. I35 

EVENING MUSING OF A MOURNER. 

The stars to-night are burning bright 

In deep immensity; 
Creation's psahn to tiie great I AM 

Rolls over earth and sea — 
Do spirits hear, in the angel sphere, 

That wond'rous minstrelsy? 

The flowers she loved by the breeze are mov'd. 

And familiar birds have come 
To rest at ease on the shrubs and trees, 

Around our pleasant home; 
But the fair child that on them smiled, 

Heeds not their song nor bloom. 

It is not late, and before our gate 

Parent and child pass by, 
And some look in, through the gloaming dim, 

But no gentle face is nigh: — 
Ah! children dear, — she is not here. 

My heart says, with a sigh. 

From a parlc<r near, sweet strains I hear — 

The voice of girls is there; 
And the tender lay of Nellie Gray 

Floats out upon the air; 
But alas for me! — that melody 

Is one I lov'd to hear. 




Af/.WZ CMCASO., 



GLEN RHODA. 



OUR CHILDREN. I37 

And yet there seems, like a voice in dreams, 

A ■u'hisper in my mind — 
It says — /';;/ jzcar — your tJioughts I hear — 

Dear mourners^ be resign d; 
hi the spirit land^ xuith the angel band., 

Your lost one you shall jind. 



'Tis years ago since Rboda fell asleep. We desired some 
memorial of her in our new home, and when we removed 
to our place of retirement in the woods, a company of us 
sailed across a beautiful sheet of water, to which we had 
given the name of Crystal Lake. It lay adjacent to the 
lands upon which we had located the site for our Christian 
schools. On the opposite side, about three miles away, 
there was a romantic glen, down which fell in cascades, for 
one hundred feet, a beautiful stream of cool, clear water. 
The company desired that I should give a name to the 
place. I called it Glen Rhoda, and on an adjacent tree, 
at the foot of the cascade, I had a label painted — Glen 
Rhoda ; so that the passer-by might learn the name of the 
glen. Evil-disposed persons took down the label ; but still 
it retains its name, and in the future, when the well-dis- 
posed and the evil-disposed of this generation are no more, 
I hope the beautiful crystal stream may still be called 
"Glen Rhoda." 

Yesterday, a few friends took a boat and sailed over the 
lake, in company with Miss Weltha Post, a friend from our 
old home in Ohio, who loved Rhoda in her life, and who 
still cherishes her memory. We climbed the hill side, and 
brought away a rose bush and some forget-me-not grow'mg 
in the glen. We all felt that the pure, retired stream was a 
fitting memorial forever of our gentle and pure-hearted 
child, now in heaven. 



I3S OUR CHILDREN. 

LINES, 

IN MEMORY OF MRS. RHODA HOWARD FENN, BY MRS. LEILA TRASK. 

How strange sometimes is the life-history of the good 
and the gifted. I have scarcely known a heart so pure as 
that of my sister-in-law, who was in her youth a member 
of our family. She was a sufferer for long years ; and her 
young friend who wrote the following verses was singularly 
gifted, yet her life was likewise a life of suffering, and both 
died young, — and died soon after being married. So it 
often is in this world. It is not only true that many whom 
the Lord loves die young, but it is likewise true that many 
such ones suffer long before they leave us. There is mys- 
tery in the mercy of suffering. Christ, the purest human 
being, was the greatest sufferer. 

Of these young women no memorial remains, except 
what is here written. The gifted and pure-hearted have 
gone, and left no record in time. To the human family, 
except the few who knew and loved them, and who will 
soon sleep with them, they are as though they had never 
been. But "the pure in heart shall see God." Their re- 
cord is on high ; and when those who have prostituted their 
gifts for the attainment of a mere earthly record, shall go 
to their own place, these " shall shine as the stars for ever 
and ever." 

In a letter detailing the incidents of the last illness and 
death of Mrs. Fenn, the following passage occurs, the im- 
agery of which is in Mrs. Trask's verses. Her husband, in 
speaking of her decease, wrote : — 

"Just before her death she dreamed that there was a 
snow-storm which drifted and lay in heaps about her, 
although she did not seem to be much in it. She thought 
that the sun was near setting in the west, veiled by a light 
cloud, through which it could be seen ; the edges of the 
cloud were tinged by the golden rays of the light." * * 
The scene then suddenly changed, and the earth was clad 



OUR CHILDREN. 1 39 

in green ; and she beheld the most lovely and odoriferous 
flowers of every shade and hue which it is possible to con- 
ceive, and fruits that were more delicious and luxurious 
than she had ever seen. She said she had no language to 
describe its loveliness. When she awoke she related her 
dream, and thought that it meant she should be restored to 
health and happiness on earth : but was it not an intima- 
tion from the spirit land that she was soon to depart to that 
region where — 

" Everlasting spring abides and ever-blooming flowers." 
LINES. 

Visions of the spirit land 
Steal o'er me now ; — 
Tones from a music band, 
Gentle and low — 
Forms of die beautiful 
Come to my sight, 
Robed in pure vestments, — 
Golden and white. 

Bright visions are thronsrins: 
My spirit around ; 
Gleamings of beauty 
My last sleep surroimd ; 
Strange flowers are blooming, 
Wond'rously bright. 
Unfolding their blossoms 
In prismatic light. 



140 OUR CHILDREN. 

Life's fetters are breaking — 

My soul is away : — 

My sleep is but waking 

To glorious clay; 

My life's sun is setting, 

To rise on that shore 

Whose ecstatic visions 

Are mine ever more. 
****** 

And so she passed away, with that bright dream 
Of heaven upon her soul — heaven was revealed 
To her, and the immortal fruits and flowers 
That grow in that bright clime. — And it is well 
The spirit may outsoar even in chains 
Its dwelling-place on earth, and mate with those 
Who, in the unseen world, wing from their home to this 

— I can not say farewell : — Thou didst but sleep 
To wake in heaven. — And yet thy form — 
Thy spirit's form — is with us now ; and thoughts 
Of heaven that in our souls are waked 
Are but thy spirit's sweet commune with ours. 
Thou art the same to us, only the light 
Of thy new glory veils thee from our eyes, 
As stellar rays are hid by noon-day sun. 

And can we weep who loved her well on earth.'* 
No link is broken by her journey hence, 



OUR CHILDREN. I4I 

But one is added to the chain that links 
Our souls to hers. — And ye are nearer now 
Than when she put her hand in thine on earth — 
— Look up, and ye hy faith shall see that sphere 
Where white-winged spirits from the tree of life 
Pluck its fair fruits, and live forever more. 

Leila Trask. 



BLIND PHCEBE, 



There came to our door one day a poor blind girl, led 
by a younger sister. Blind Phoibe — for such was her 
name — had been educated in the asylum of a neighboring 
State. She had a good voice, and accompanied her songs 
with tolerable skill on the piano or the melodeon. She 
wished to give a concert, or obtain aid in some other way, 
for her parents, whom she represented as being in need of 
assistance, on account of ill health and an invalid family. 
We inquired and learned the truth of Phoebe's story. We 
found likewise an illustration of the kindly disposition which 
the poor often manifest among themselves. 

The parents of Phoebe were cousins. They had removed 
from a slave state and were living on a piece of land rented 
from a wealthy relative in Ohio. As often occurs when 
cousins marry, or when those marry who are alike in their 
physical and moral qualities and characteristics, most of the 
children were defective either in body or mind. One other 
sister of Phoebe was totally blind ; and two others of the 
family were marked by some physical or mental deteriora- 
tion. They were so poor when we first became acquainted 
with their circumstances, that they had no cow ; and often 



142 OUK CHILDREN. 

they sat down to very scanty meals. Yet living with this 
poor family were two aged grandparents and an aunt, 
with whom they shared whatever they procured of food or 
raiment. The rich uncle had many broad acres, but yet 
he did little for his destitute relatives. The poor did what 
they could, and continued to do so till the grandparents 
died. When their aged friends were removed from them 
by death, the poor family exerted themselves to procure a 
decent coffin and grave clothes for the departed, and fol- 
lowed them to the grave with sincere sorrow. Perhaps when 
the rich relative dies he will be mourned for, as- other rich 
men often are : — the sorrow of the living will be mitigated 
by the event, long looked forward to, that his money is to 
be distributed. 

Having learned the facts in relation to Phoebe's family, 
we interested ourselves to advise and aid her. Hitherto 
her eff'orts had gained no permanent relief. My wife ad- 
vised her in regard to personal habits, and aided her by 
furnishing apparel and other little things, by which she 
could make herself more presentable than before. I wrote 
letters to friends stating her case, and used means to inter- 
est amateur singers to aid her in her little village concerts. 
She was advised to save whatever money she could obtain 
beyond what was necessary for present wants, and to de- 
posit her little sums with me, upon interest, until she had 
procured enough to buy herself and parents a humble 
home in some new county at the West. During her efforts 
we promised her and her sister a home for rest and refresh- 
ment. 

With this object in view, Phoebe began the effort, and in 
less than three years she had money enough to secure forty 
acres of land in the State of Indiana, upon which is a com- 
fortable log cabin and about thirty acres of clearing. A 
young orchard is growing; and there are cows, pigs, chick- 
ens, and all the surroundings of a home in a new country. 
Her father and brother were improving the litde plantation 
when I last heard from them. The other blind sister was 
getting an education. The grandparents and aunt are in 



OUR CHILDREN. I43 

heaven. The family are respected by their neighbors. The 
rich uncle and his family still live ; but I have not suc- 
ceeded in leading Phoebe to love them as she should. 

When blind Phoebe began her effort for a farm, I wrote, 
and we taught her the following song, which she usually 
sang at all her humble village concerts : 



THE BLIND GIRL'S SONG. 

Tune — " VV/jai Fairy-like Music." 
I. 

They tell me the sky is a deep azure blue, 
All jevvel'd with stars that are nightly in view; 
That the sun shines in glory, with life in his light. 
And the moon walks in beauty — the queen of the 
night: — 
Refrain. But ah me! — the blind girl can not see! 

II. 

They tell me the flowers are varied in hue; 
That the mother looks fondly — the lover looks true; 
That in spring-time the landscape is blithesome and gay 
With the plumage of birds, and the blossoms of May : — > 

But ah me! — the blind girl can not see! 

HI. 

They tell me that storm-clouds oft cover the sky; 
That the lightning leaps out from its covert on high ; 
But when storms are departing, and soft breezes blow, 
The heaven is spann'd with a beautiful bow: — 

But ah me! — the blind girl can not see! 



144 OUR CHILDREN. 

IV. 

And they tell me of regions still brighter above, 
Where beings of beauty are living in love; 
Where flow^ers more fragrant, and landscapes more fair 
Are springing and blooming eternally there: — 

And ah me! — the blind girl there shall see! 



TO MY WIFE. 

Atlantic Ocean, May, 1S54. 

At night, on the wide, wide sea, 

When the winds and the waves are high, 

My memory turns to thee. 
With the tribute of a sigh. 

Through many a chcquer'd scene, 

We 've travel'd side by side ; 
Eventful and busy our lives have been 

Since you were first my bride. 

In the weal and woe of life 

More sorely you've been tried; 
But I have stood by your side, my wife. 
When our poor orphans died. 

Our Father above is kind ; 

The angels have guided our way; 



OUR CHILDREN. 



145 



With a trusting heart, and a hopeful mind 
We '11 walk till the close of day. 

In the battle with sin and wrong 
We have acted well our part : — 

By a thoughtless word we may have err'd, 
But never have erred in heart. 





MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. 



MOTHER. 



I DARE not write a eulogy of my mother. She had a 
peculiarly meek and quiet spirit; so much so that she would 
not be pleased with words that published her virtues. She 
was twice married, and reared three families of children, 
One of which were children of her second husband by a 
former wife. I never knew a shade of difference in her 
treatment of these children. 

Like some others of whom I have read, she seemed to 
have a premonition of her death. She visited all her 
friends who were near and told them it was her last visit. 
Near the time of her death she slept at the dwelling of a 
sister. In the morning her sister approached her bed to in- 
vite her to breakfast. She was awake and cheerful, and 
uttered the following words, which undoubtedly had just 
taken form in her mind : 

"The time is approaching, and soon it will be, 
When the door will fly open and the prisoner go free." 

Soon after she was taken ill, and died as she had lived, 
in peace. Her pastor, who stood by her bed-side, told her 
she was about to die. She replied : " The holy and 
BLESSED WILL OF GoD BE DONE." Soon after, she spoke 
the name of her daughter and fell asleep. Her daughter 
was then unmarried, and for many months afterwards a 



MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. 147 

feeling of sadness, approaching melancholy, weighed upon 
her mind. The God to whom our mother each day com- 
mitted her children has, by a kind and guiding Providence, 
wonderfully provided for them all. We attribute much of 
the good we have received to our mother's prayers. Would 
it be wrong to say — to ministration and guidance she was 
permitted to give ? 

TRIBUTE TO A DEPARTED MOTHER. 

Thou vvert mild, dearest mother — the world could not 
know 

A spirit SO pure and so meek, 
But the cliildren who sat by thy heart's fountain flow 

Of thy love and thy virtue may speak. 

We '11 remember thee — mother — thy language so kind, 

Thy voice and thy love-speaking eye, 
When our thoughts are at rest thou wilt speak to our 
mind, 

And our hearts will respond with a sigh. 

If the souls of the saints from their home in the sky 

Any guidance on mortals bestow. 
We are sure that our mother will often be nigh 

To the lov'd ones who linger below. 

Farewell, dearest mother — \vefecl thou art gone, 

The cold earth on thy coffin is pi'ess'd, 
"GocFs holy and righteous will has been done" — 

We shall meet in the home of the blest. 



MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. 149 



THE TRAVELER ON THE MOUNTAIN. 



A YOUTH left the city of Pittsburg when twenty years of 
age to walk three hundred miles a-foot, over the Allegheny 
Mountains, to Philadelphia. 

In the early days of the West, before there were railroads 
or canals, Philadelphia was considered a long distance from 
the Ohio River. I was to have a companion in my journey, 
but he was a stout young man, and it did not seem fitting 
that a youth of pale features and slender form should en- 
dure the fatigue of travel with so sturdy a companion. 

The morning that I was to leave home, when I awoke, 
my mother was praying near my bed. A little cortege of 
friends accompanied us with a conveyance the first day's 
journey. Then with a little bundle in my hand, I began 
my journey a-foot from what was then called the West to the 
East. We achieved the three hundred and twenty miles in 
about ten days in the month of August. Every day I was 
wearied with the heat and travel ; and when I could per- 
suade my companion to tarry a few moments and sit down 
under the blessed shade of some green tree by the way- 
side, the rest was to me an Eden, and I almost invariably 
sank into a sleep, until aroused to set out again on my 
journey. 

On one of the upper ranges of the Alleghenies, a little 
path led down a few yards to a spring which gushed from 
the rocks and ran in a sweet, fresh rivulet under the trees 
and down the mountain side with a murmur which was 
soothing to my soul as music over the sea. We turned 
aside, as all way-worn travelers did in those days, to drink 
of the pure water, and sit down to rest on the green sward 
on the margin of the stream. To me the cool shade, the 
brook, the green sward, the gentle breeze, were a refresh- 
ment to body and mind, the sweetness of which I can not 
describe. 



150 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. 

When we arose and walked on in our journey, the fol- 
lowing stanza took form in my mind — a daguerreotype of 
the actual impression received at tlie Mountain Spring : 

, Know ye delight when the soul is sad 
With the sorrows fatigue can brinsf — 
If ye do — ye have sat on the mountain brow, 
And drank of the mountain spring. 

And you 've laid you down on the cool, green sward, 
Where the brook ran murmuring by; 
While the feather'd songsters overhead 
Carol'd a lullaby. 

And you thought the breeze that llnger'd nigh. 
And whisper'd among the boughs, 
Was kind as the breath of a husband's sigh 
On the cheek of his new-wed spouse. 

Subsequently the preceding verses were sent to a friend 
with the following accompaniment. It was a friend who 
Vvould pardon the egotism of a description which was 
graphic and truthful, of one scarcely past the period of 
boyhood. 

A traveler on the mountain. 
In a warm mid-summer day, 
Sat down beside a fountain 
That gush'd beside the way; 
'Twas a cool, sequester'd fountain, 
Wlicrc the birds and breezes play. 



MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. 151 

He was a youthful traveler, 
And delicately fair, 
With eye as bright as diamond light, 
And richly curling hair — 
His hat lay by him on the sward, 
Bosom and brow were bare. 

'Twas a pleasant spot, and a pleasant thought, 
Which Memory treasui'es still, 
Flow'd through his mind, as he lay reclin'd 
By the flowing mountain rill — 
The rest seem'd sweet, and nature kind. 
And numbers flowed at will — 

The numbers flow'd at will, dear friend, 
And I write them here for you; 
That spring refreshed my weary mind 
As drops of honey-dew, 
Or cooling balm, when angels seem 
To anoint the lips in a fever'd dream. 



LINES, 

Written in 1S30, in memory of a dumb girl, whom I saw when quite a 

young muii, at an cxliibition of tlie Deaf and Dumb 

Asylum in the City of Philadelphia. 

She was a fair young girl, and all I've seen 
Of woman has not left within my mind 



153 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. 

So pure a picture. Her beauty was not such 

As I have seen in portraits. It seeni'd to hve 

Upon her face. And when her mind had caught 

Her teachei^'s thought, her soul would seem to come 

In beams of intellect to her dark eyes, 

And light her pleasing features with a glow 

Of meaning I could read. I felt my heart 

Was sympathizing with that silent girl; 

She felt so too. Her soft, deep eyes had caught 

My earnest gaze. Her glance grew fix'd a moment, 

Soft'ning down into a tender inquiry. 

Which ask'd if I had lov'd or pitied her: — 

And then — she turn'd her eyes away and blush'd. — 

Oh Nature, it was lovely thus to place 

A sacred spring within the virgin breast, 

Wliich in the bosom of this voiceless girl. 

Who knew no reason why her check grew warm, 

Would tb.us vibrate and tremble to be touch'd 

By the slight impulse of an ardent look. 

Unknown to that f;iir girl was art's device 
And the dissimulation of the world. 
Her heart was a hid fountain, and its springs 
Of pure and fresh affection lay conceal'd 
From the intrusion of the common herd: — 
The flatt'rer'sbreath — the impiety of men; 
The words of malice, pride, and guilt, which soil 
And harden other hearts, came not to her. 



MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. 153 

I then was very young-, and thoughts like these 
Canie to my mind: — that if I could unseal 
That maiden's ear, and pour into her mind 
A living language, soften'd by tlie deep 
And touching pathos of a kind regard — 
And thus awake her sympathies, until 
Tloe sweet affection of her virgin heart 
Flow'd forth like rich refreshing upon mine — 
I'd leave ambitious plans to selfish men 
(Who toil and struggle anxiously to gain 
An increase of anxiety) and live 
In wedlock with that maiden. And I'd store 
Her mind with a rich furniture, and by 
The tendcrest, lo\ing kindnesses and care 
Unite her heart-life with my own for aye. 

— I'm older now, and Fancy more restrain'd, 
Yet to my thought to-day, there came the form 
Of that fair, voiceless girl ; and I have pray'd 
She may have happiness that angels know — 
That in the silent dwelling of her soul 
Sweet peace and joy may bide continually. 

7* 



154 MISCEM.ANKOUC PIECES. 

ANCIENT EGYPT. 

Suggested by reading a treatise on the History and Antiquities of Egypt. 

I. 

Egypt, thou wonder of the primal age, 
In the Nilotic Valley, long ago, 
The priests of Amun, the Memphitic sage. 
Inscribed the preface to what men may know 
Upon thy granite obelisks — in tombs 
Where mummied relics of thy great ones lie. 
In the stupendous pyramids, whose rooms 
Abysmal — cavernous — Time's power defy. 

II. 
Whence were thy people, Egypt.'' — whence the 
might 
And wealth of Menes, — the first Theban king.? 
Who taught thy sacerdotal class to write 
In hieroglyphics.'' — Did their knowledge spring 
From ancient Meroe.'' — Was the light that shone 
Upon thine orient, in the morn of time 
KintUed by Hermes, or a radiance thrown 
Into thy valley from some western clime.'' 

III. 
Who shall resolve the riddle ? — Who collate 
Thy fables, and translate them into truth? 
Who place thy unplac'd kings — or give the date 
Of those who reigned when Saturn was a youth.'' 



MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. 155 

IV. 

That thou hi age wast hoary, the long range 
Of temples, tombs, sarcophagi declare; 
And thy vast superstitions, vile and strange, 
Proclaim idolatry grown dotard there. 

V. 

Impressive lesson! — Time developes mind, 
And nations by the lapse of years grow wise. 
But God unknown, — the human mind is blind. 
And reason si?iks in her attempts to rise. 

VI. 

God is unknown to reason : ye might gaze 
On P/ira^ thy sun-god, till the eye would be 
Confused and cloudy ; — but as thro' a haze, 
Or darken'd glass, his texture we may see, 
So, Lord of hosts, the soul may gaze on Thee: — 
Jesus revealed, yet veil'd, the Deity. 



THE SERENADE. 

"There is in souls a sympathy with sounds"; — but it 
is with sounds that have melody and sweet modulation in 
them. The fantasias of the fashionable artistes ai-e to the 
lovers of melody like a substitute of painted sugar-plumbs 
for the refreshing flavor and richness of natural fruit. Car- 
lyle's exclamation against the opera, in the Dumphries 
Album, is merely the outbreak of a heart true to nature, 



156 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. 

against the desecration of chaste and beautiful music. " Oh 
heavens ! " says he, " when I think that music too is con- 
demned to be mad, and to burn herself on such a funeral 
pile, your celestial opera house grows dark and infernal to 
me." But when beautiful thought is connected with natu- 
ral melody 

" By many a winding 'bout 
Of linked sweetness long drawn out," 

the mind is soothed or elated, and the heart vibrates to the 
sweet cadences of tlie singer — 

" What sweet tears dim the eye unshed, 
What wild vows falter on the tongue. 
When ' Scots wha ha' wi' Wallace bled,' 
Or ' Auld Lang Syne,' is sung." 

The night after my first return from Europe, in 1854, was 
beautiful with calm and moonlight. Just as I was dropping 
into the Dreamland, I was attracted and charmed by a 
sweet serenade under my window. The viol, flute, and 
guitar accompanied sweet and familiar voices singing a 
song of ivclconic home ! To me the music was as Ossian's 
" Song of other days, sweet and pleasant to the soul." I 
endeavored to perpetuate my sense of the incident in the 
following verses: — 



MY WELCOME HOME. 

In realms remote, o'er land and main, 
On Alpine heights — in cities old, 
I've wandcr'd, — and now home again 
Returns the shepherd to the fold. 

'Tis the first rest for many days; 
The c^uiet seems all sweet and deep; 



MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. I57 

And grateful thoughts, on whigs of praise, 
Are mingling with the sense of sleep. 

Around my home, on slirub and tree, 
The moonlight sheen sleeps on the bough; 
And gentle breezes, soothingly, 
Come through the lattice o'er my brow. 

But hark! sweet strains of minstrelsy — 
Half seeming from the land of dreams — 
A " welcome home," in melody, 
Floats gently in with the moonbeams. 

I've heard sweet music in the halls 
Where sat the proud — where pageantry. 
And master- hands and voices — all 
Joined to gi\e soul to melody — 

I've heard sweet music o'er the sea. 
And music from the mountain height; 
But music never spoke to me 
In tones so heavenly as that night. 



MUSICAL SURPRISE. 

Another musical surprise occurred soon after my return, 
in 1854. During a literary lecture which I delivered to the 
people of our quiet little city of Mansfield, Ohio, recounting 



15S MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. 

incidents of travel, the sweet singers of the town had con^ 
vened and unexpectedly they sang with accompaniments 
the following verses. I insert them because they are beau- 
tiful to me as a memorial of the friends of other days. 

I'm with you once again, my friends, 

No more my footsteps roam ; 
Where it began my journey ends, 

Amid the joys of home. 
No other clime has skies so blue, 

Or streams so broad and clear, 
And where are hearts so warm and true 

As those that meet me here ? 

Since last with footstep firm and free 

I pressed my native strand, 
I've wander'd many miles by sea 

And many miles by land ; 
I've seen the nations of the earth, 

Of many a hue and tongue, 
Which taught me more to prize the worth 

Of that from which I sprung. 

My native land, I turn to you 

With blessing and with prayer. 
Where men are brave, and women true. 

And free as mountain air. 
Long may our flag in triumph wave 

Against the world combin'd, 
And friends a welcome, foes a grave, 

Within our borders find. 

Beneath these lines, in 1861, an English lady wrote the 
words — Alas for the flag ! — Bessie Englis. 

Following which I wrote, in 1866 — Hallelujah for the 
flag! — J. B. W. 



MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. I^g 

CONRAD AND ELLEN. 

A LEGEND OF THE SUSQUEHANNA. 

In a valley of the mountainous district of Pennsylvania, 
about the year 1808, a young man, a descendant of the 
German Lutherans, and a young woman, daughter of a 
Scotch family, were schooled in the same village, and loved 
each other from childhood. A villain from another State, 
who taught a school in the settlement, contrived to have a 
crime, of which he was himself guilty, alleged and sworn 
against Conrad. The scheme succeeded. The villagers 
deemed the youth guilty. His penalty would have been 
shame and heavy expenditure, if he had remained in the 
State. The young maiden could not marry him for very 
shame, although she knew, or verily believed him to be 
faultless. Her parents would have spurned her from them, 
if she had done so. The young man fled from home and 
friends. He went away to the old country from which his 
parents came. The young woman remained to pine in 
secret and to die. The rest of the legend is in the ballad. 

CONRAD AND ELLEN. 

A wand'rer o'er the world's wide ranges, 

Up and down, 
Returned to witness rueful changes 

In our town. 

He loved, how well no tongue can tell ; — 

In early youth 
A maiden fair, with auburn hair, 

Pledgr'd him her truth. 



l6o MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. 

But ah! they parted, broken hearted, 
He went forth, 

A wand'rer weary, sad and dreary, 
O'er the earth. 

But change came down on our town 

When he was gone, 

A wretch oppress'd v/ith death, confess'd 
What he had done. 

The guilty man had form'd a plan, 

By which his crimes 

Were laid on one, now wand'ring lone, 
In other climes. 

The trusting maid had always said 

The day would come 

When time would prove her own true love 
No ill had done. 

When death reveal'd the guilt concealed, 
The maiden wept, — 

Her face was pale, but a sweet smile 

O'er her cheek crept. 

— The wand'rer dream'd — to him it seem'd 
That Ellen came 

All pale and white, at noon of night. 
And call'd his name. 



MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. l6l 

The well-known tone, with power unknown, 
Thrill'dlikeadart — 

Some words she spoke — the wand'rer woke 
With throbbing heart. 

O'er land and sea he seem'd to flee, 

To reach his home; 

When years had sped, the people said 
Poor Conrad's come. 

He sought the cot, and heard her lot 

With bated breath — 
By parents old, the tale was told, 
Of love in death. 

She kept the ring — a sacred thing, 

Which Conrad gave ; 
That it might rest upon her breast, 

When in the grave. 

One pledge she took — Give him my book; 

And when I die, 
Show him the mound in yonder ground 

Where I shall lie. 

— Then Conrad bow'd, and sobb'd aloud, 
With bended head: 

The angel's gone, and I'm alone, 
Was all he said. 



l62 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. 

A changed man he walked again 

His native town : 

His words were few with those he knew, 
His eyes cast down. 

On the same night her vision briglit 
Call'd him in love, 

The heart that kept his troth and wept, 
Had ceased to move. 

Near to the mound which marks the ground 
Where Ellen sleeps. 

He built a cot, and on that spot 

His dwelling keeps. 

And people say, at close of day, 

Pensive and slow. 

Where Ellen lies with downcast eyes, 
They see him go. 

And some believe, on a quiet eve 
Her spirit's seen 

Softly to glide, near by his side, 

In th' moonlisrht sheen. 



MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. 1 63 



THE ANGEL WHISPER. 

Sometimes, in the pause of busy life. 

When my mind is very still, 
There looks on me in memory's glass, 

Without the call of will, 
A kind young face, from the Land of Youth, 

And when she comes I sigh; 
And my mind is held, as by the spell, 

Of an unseen spirit nigh. 

Long, long ago — in boyhood's time, 

She was my earliest love; 
But ere the flush of maiden prime, 

Slie join'd the choir above — 
Her presence gives a sign of peace; 

All selfish thought is gone; 
I hear her silent words awhile, 

And then, I am alone! 

In the Land of the Hereafter, 

I shall meet an angel friend, 
Whose presence I shall know by thoughts 

That with my thinking blend ; 
She will tell me in life's jDilgrimage 

She oftentimes was nigh, 
And look'd on me in Memory's glass 

Till I answer'd with a si^h. 



164 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. 



A TEAR FOR HUGH MILLER. 



Impromptu, on hearing the character and labors of Hugh Miller 
delineated in a commencement exercise at Oberlin College. 



Young man, I thank thee, I have shed a tear, 
A treasured tear which I had felt was due 
To him who had decipher'd the stone book, 
And traced the fossil hieroglyphs which tell 
Of paleozoic life, in ages old — 
In the gray morning of Creation's day. 

Hugh Miller — man of Cromarty! — I shed 
That tear for thee. It was not worship ; 
It was not regret. The wand that struck the rock, 
And brought the tear-drop from its hidden fount, 
Was a daguerreotype of thy true life, 
Struck in the light of earnest, truthful thought. 

I saw thy manly forni — I saw the sign 
Of high intent upon thine ample brow — 
Mark'd thy fine eye dilate with gratitude, 
When the foint trace of vertebrated life 
In Old Red Sandstone first reveal'd itself: — 
Then came a tear — a tribute to the worth 
Of him who read the archytypal forms 
Which God inscribed upon the pedestal 
Of the great column of organic life. 



MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. 165 

Thank God ! my mind is easier, better now — 
For my emotion has an answer given 
To my conviction, that I ought to shed 
A tear for thee — Hugh Miller! 



ON RELINQUISHING LEGAL STUDIES. 

Good-bye old books of legal lore, 

I leave you with a sigh; 
Reason and right I lov'd f explore — 

Their principles apply. 

I turn to that supremest aim, 

To live for others' good ; 
Reason and right are still the same — 

Love is by foith in God. 



IN MEMORIAM, 

To the early members of the Western Reserve College, in memory of their 
friend, Rev. Charles B. Storrs, first president of the Institution. 
T he death of President Storrs was hastened by the hostility of a part of 
the Trustees of the College to his anti-slavery principles. 

Honor the good 1 — bow down and bless 
The pure in heart, whose holiness 



1 65 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. 

Reached and enriched your mind ; 
The humbly wise are truly great — 
Great in high thoughts which elevate 

The aims of human kind. 

Ho7ior the great I — the great of soul, 
Who live above the mean control 

Of low and selfish minds: 
Who see and dare maintain the right, 
When cowards flee they stand and fight, 

In presence of the flames. 

Honor the hcro^ who will stand 
For truth and judgment in the land, 

Nor yield to selfish fears — 
Who in the dark sows seeds of light — 
Germ truths, which spring to moral might, 
In minds of after years 

Honor the dcad^ whose life was given 
A sacrifice for truth — the leaven 

Of martyr blood has power — 
If falt'ring in the fight with sin — 
Storrs falter'd not. — Remember him — 

'Twill heliD us in that hour. 



MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. 167 

SONNET. 

JOHN QJJ INCY ADAMS. 

Heav'n bless you — Old man eloquent — Be firm 
For God and truth, humanity and right: 
Who speaks but for the present and for self 
Denies Jehovah — Speak for man, and then 
This mightiest nation of the future age 
Will build for thee a lofty monument 
And blazon under thy illustrious name 
This tribute to thy memory : — 

Friend of humanity and truth, we come 
To rear this column to the great of soul; 
That men may gather courage at the tomb 
Of one who rose above the mean control 
Of party trammels. — One who in the might 
Of a great principle stood all alone — ■ 
Arm'd in th' impervious panoply of right 
Met base and braggait minds and struck them down. 



l68 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES, 



A SONNET. 

Impromptu, to my friend, Hon. J. Brinkerhoff, on receiving intelligence 
that the Liberty or " Wilmol Proviso " was written liy him, and passed 
to Hon. J. Wihnot, who olYercd it in Congress, 1S46. 

Stand, Brinkerhoft', for Truth and Liberty : 
Stand on the great rock-principle, that right 
Alone can give stability to States. 
Be courteous to the South, she has a share 
Of noble, patriot minds. Give such the mead 
That honor pays to worth. But yet, be firm; 
Firm for free land, free labor, and free men — 
A better age will come: the Muse of History 
Will crown with bays enduring as the soul, 
Statesmen who dared do battle for the truth. 
Fear not — As God lives, righteousness shall reign — 
One with the Lord is a majority — 
God's spirit is in providence — hencefoilh 
JVo question '5 settled till 'tis settled right. 



WASHINGTON IRVING. 

ON READING A NOTICE OF HIS DECEASE. 

Irving, I long have lov'd thy classic thought- 
Chaste, sprightly, spirited, and often quaint : 



MISCKLLANEOUS PIECES. 1 69 

Sometimes pathetic — never low, nor aim'd 

1 o catch eclat from vain or \'ulgar minds. 

It was not labor but a sense of rest, 

Nay, of exhilaration, for my mind 

To travel on with thine. But yet my heart 

Had felt a yearning, that e'er death should come, 

Some mark of moral dignity might crown 

The labors of thy life. Alas, thy bust 

Wears but the chaplet of rare intellect — 

— The true regalia of the kingly soul : — 

The sympathy of intellect with right — 

The courage to exalt the true and good — 

To damn the wrong — Alas! where find v\^e these? 

'Tis pitiful — thy diadem will fade. 

No mind is noble but the conscience- crowd d. 



[The following letter was marked and prolonged by the interest felt at the 
time. But its principles are right, and as principles as well as poetry are 
the burden of the book, we will not omit it.] 

Grove Lawn Villa, ) 

Betizonia, Mich., 1867. ) 
Jabez Burns, D.D., Paddingion, London : 

My Dear Sir — I can give you but a brief minute of edu- 
cational matters in our State, and the passage of the con- 
stitutional amendment. I remember some friends at your 
house seemed almost incredulous when I told them that I 
knew well an ex-govcrnor in the State of Ohio who sawed 
his own wood, while his wife did her own baking. I pre- 
8 



170 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. 

sume the facts that have fallen out since then, — Abraham 
Lincoln, our President, having spent his youth as a laborer 
on a farm, and Andrew Johnson, the Vice-President, as a 
working tailor — have made your people somewhat less in- 
credulous on the subject of the sovereignty of the people in 
America, 

One mistake, however, all Europeans fall into when the 
rule of the common people in America is spoken of. Their 
minds revert immediately to the ignorant and incompetent 
working men that they see around them in their own coun- 
try, and they conceive that such are the rulers of America. 
This is a mischievous mistake. Our institutions educate all 
the people, except the misguided Catholics, whom their 
priests prevent from the common privileges of American 
citizens ; and hence, they and their children are the ma- 
terial which largely compose our mobs, our saloon popula- 
tion, and our criminal calendar. The working people who 
rise to places of influence and trust in America are those 
naturally select minds who have acquired for themselves a 
store of general knowledge, and have passed up from lower 
to higher levels of citizenship. Lincoln was not only a 
working farmer in his youth, but he became an eminent 
lawyer before he was President. Johnson was in the begin- 
ning a working tailor, but he raised himself through almost 
every grade of citizenship to the Vice-Presidency. A re- 
public of the people can stand only on New Testament 
conscience and school culture. 

An instance of the working of this principle on a large 
scale was our Senate of Michigan, which managed the 
affairs of the State during the most difficult period of the 
slave-holders' rebellion. They were generally select men 
of strong common sense, and mostly well educated, although 
few of them had ever been to a school above those of 
the common schools of our States. Their mental disci- 
pline had been acquired by plan, study, and practice, in 
devising ways and means to manage their own affairs, and 
public affairs, in the new counties of a new State. Such 
labors demand discriminating thought and energy, and 



MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. l>ji 

give better discipline of a practical kind than collegiate 
training can do without them. Indeed, your distinguished 
townsman, Mr. Lowe, M.P., is probably right when he 
doubts whether the study of the dead languages does not 
train the mind to a blind and verbose expression of ideas, 
rather than to logical and discriminative thinking. 

I was chairman of the Committee on Public Instruction, 
and had opportunities to know the views of these gentle- 
men on educational subjects. They were all friends of 
education, but had not scholastic experience enough to 
know that studies advanced beyond the knowledge obtained 
by general reading and the high school branches of com- 
mon school study, are of little value either to the individual 
or to the State, in the management of jDractical affairs. 

Common schools are the highest and most fundamental 
interest of a free State. Colleges scattered over the State 
to prepare school teachers of the people and for the people 
are a secondary need. State universities with large endow- 
ments are generally corrupting powers to the morals of 
students, and not so valuable as educators as the normal 
schools and colleges of the State. There is a ring of 
regents and teachers in our State University, who go for 
that institution against the people — go for it because by 
aggrandizing it they make themselves more conspicuous. 
They are usually nominated because it is supposed they 
will have influence with the Legislature. Some of those, 
and usually the president of the University, make applica- 
tion each session for money from the general fund. They 
are already in possession of too large an endowment to be 
safe conservators of the morals of the pupils ; yet they have 
generally succeeded in filching money from the State 
Treasury which should be devoted, if granted at all, to 
common schools, or to normal instruction in the several 
colleges, where the morals of the pupils would not be de- 
teriorated by loose discipline and the bad example of reck- 
less young men. 

There is not one boy in one hundred thousand in our 
•State that will ever be benefited by erudite and speculative 



172 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. 

studies. Other States are wiser than we in this respect, and 
are not willing to tax the many for the benefit of the few. 
No State should pay for what may be called amateur studies. 
The Smithsonian, the Cornell, and the other institutions 
and foundations, endowed by amateur students, are all 
that are needed. The expenditure of the public money for 
education that does not benefit the children of the State 
generally, is a wrong proceeding. 

Besides, our University acts for itself against the interests 
of general education and contrary to the design of the 
original foundation. The organic law requires that after a 
certain advance in endowment shall be gained, branch 
schools for normal instruction shall be established in the 
judicial districts of the State, This beneficent provision is 
avoided by the University ring of regents. This is done by 
building new houses, adding new professorships, and de- 
moralizing professors and students by increased salaries. 
We say demoralizing students, because in our useful col- 
leges, where professors get only a salary that affords a 
comfortable living, they are more intimately and socially 
one with the students, and thus the students have the bene- 
fit of their social culture, piety and daily example. Large 
salaries separate professors from students, and office-holders 
from the people, and thus tend to create corruption and 
aristocracy, which are the bane of Church and State. 

During my service in the Senate, we did nothing to per- 
vert the funds of the State to aristocratic uses. I got 
through, v/ith but six dissenting votes, the revised school 
law, v/hich I think is the best in the world. [It was laid 
over that winter in the House, but was passed by the next 
Legislature.] But our schools have no ring to operate in 
their behalf, and in the future undoubtedly the University 
will get money again from the general fund. Our common 
school law, however, is a fixture. Including all the founda- 
tion principles of the old law, it incorporates likewise the 
best usages and provisions of the school laws of other 
States. I am sure it will work well in practice, and in all 
its essential features will remain so long as the State lasts. 



MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. 1 73 

About all the honor your friend claims in this connection 
was in engineering the bill through the Senate. The im- 
portant superintendency clause was new, and had to be 
maintained by protracted discussion. The provisions of 
the bill were digested for the committee by our able Super- 
intendent of Public Instruction. I will send you and Mr. 
Ed. Bains, M.P., a copy. I have no doubt Mr. Bains will 
yet succeed in accomplishing something for public educa- 
tion in England. 

Concerning the amendment to our national constitution 
you will have heard of its passage before this reaches you. 
There is no doubt but that the requisite number of States 
will sanction the clause to make it part of our fundamental 
law. I think I felt more like swinging my hat when I gave 
my vote in its behalf than I have done since I was a boy. 
No one in the chamber doubted but that I voted in the 
affirmative. The following extempore lines are a true ex- 
pression of both my emotion and thought on the occasion : 



A THANKSGIVING. 

" Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and 
TO the Holy Ghost : as it was in the beginning, 
IS now, and ever shall be : world without end." 

Receive the worship — Lord of Hosts 
Thine infinite and wond'rous providence 
Has brought me to this hour, and to this place: 
The high place of our good State-capitol ; 
Where with a voice raised high o'er my compeers, 
I've crown'd a life of labor, by an act 
Omnific 



1 74 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. 

" The vote 
Falls like a snow-flake on the sod, 
But executes the fVeem-i:i's will 
As lightning does the will of God." 

— I've given the vote — the aye, 
That gathering strength as it rolls thro' the States, 
Shall form a diamond sentence that shall seal 
The doom of the slave power, and forbid, 
Till time shall be no more, the barb'rous rule 
Of might o'er right. — The subjecting of will. 
Of heart, and conscience to the power of man — 
Subjection which alone is due to God. — 

Hail, native land ! I now can lift my brow 
And speak thy name as mine; — but hitherto 
A sense of shame was in the soul of all 
Who sympathized with Mercy and with Right, 
Yet saw our Union's mighty power employ'd, 
By petty despots, and by venal minds, 
To crush the weak — the ignorant ! — the poor ! 
But now 'tis done ! — Before the world we vote, 
By the authority of this Commonwealth, 
FREEDOM FOREVER IN AMERICA! 



P.S. — I am sorry that I can't join you in the proposed 
journey to California, the coming autumn. Tell our friends 
that the proposed chimera is in process of realization. I 
am actually living in a log cabin — in the woods — two 
hundred miles from a railroad. Often shake the snow off 



MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. 1^5 

my bed in the winter morning. Have the nucleus of a 
Christian colony in which we propose to develope in har- 
mony the interests of Piety, Agriculture, and Education in 
a new and destitute region of the State. The project is of 
value that can not be estimated to the future of this new 
region. It will cost self-denial and money, but D. v. it shall 
be a success. It is an effort to furnish Christian education, 
almost without cost, to the children of a poor but industrious 
population, that without our effort could have no such ad- 
vantages. J. B. W. 



GNADENHUTTEN 



Traveling upon business once in the interior of the 
State of Ohio, I found myself on Saturday evening in the 
vicinity of the Moravian settlements of Gnadenhiitten and 
Shonbrunn, in the valley of the Tuscarawas. I proposed to 
rest, according to the commandment, on the Sabbath day, 
and accordingly took lodgings for man and horse at the 
village inn. Upon inquiring, I learned that the inhabitants 
of the place were still mostly Moravians. They had a 
church in the village, and their pastor resided near by. 

We had been deeply interested by the histories of the 
faith and sacrifices of the Moravian people, and at an 
early hour in the evening we found ourselves seated with 
the pastor in his study. 

Perceiving our interest in subjects connected with the 
Moravians, he spoke of their mission at Gnadenhiitten 
and Shonbrunn, and the massacre of the Indians at that 
place. At a period soon after the establishment of the 
colonies along our Eastern Seaboard, the Moravians com- 
menced a mission among the North American Indians. 



176 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. 

When the first hostilities between the colonies and the 
Indians caused the tribes to remove westward, the Morai 
vian missionaries removed with them. Once they located 
east of the Alleghenies, upon the waters of the Susque- 
hanna. There the repose of the missionary and his little 
flock was again disturbed by the war of the Revolution. 
To escape the evils to which they would be exposed by 
contiguity to the seat of war, they again removed, and 
finally settled upon the banks of the Tuscarawas, in the 
then unbroken forests of the State of Ohio. Here they 
located their village, which they named Gnadenhiitten, or 
the tents of Grace, in the center of which was a log struc- 
ture for counsel and worship, and beneath this an excava- 
tion to store provisions. The surrounding forests were then 
filled with game. The river which ran by their villages, 
and the soil which they cultivated, furnished them with 
abundant supplies. Their minister instructed them both in 
the art of agriculture and in the faith of Christ ; and habits 
of industry and hopes of immortality were cherished by a 
little band of native Christians in the bosom of the western 
wilderness. 

Here they lived undisturbed until the commencement of 
the Indian war. When hostilities began along the north- 
western frontier, the Christian Indians refused to join the 
war party. Those, however, of their tribe who were un- 
converted, had joined hostile tribes in their depredations 
upon the frontier settlements; and a report was current, 
which probably was to some extent correct, that the hos- 
tile Indians were supplied with provisions, and permitted 
to rest, at the Christian village of Gnadenhiitten. Acting 
in view of this report an armed party left the mouth of 
Wheeling Creek, in Virginia, to destroy the village. Among 
them was a frontier settler whose wife and children had 
been massacred by hostile Indians a few weeks before. It 
was at the time of corn gatherirg. The Indians were at 
their village collecting their harvest. The white party in 
approaching killed the son of the missionary, whom they 
met a short distance from the village. In the afternoon 



MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. 1 77 

they reached Gnadenhiitten, and captured and disarmed 
the Indians. The captives were told when they gave up 
their arms that they were to be removed to Pittsburg on 
the following day. They were then all shut up in the log 
building which had served as a store-house and a place of 
worship. The white party, after their prisoners were 
secured, held a counsel, and the recent massacre of the 
white woman and her children caused the worst influences 
to prevail. The announcement was made to the Indians 
that their death was determined by the counsel of frontiers- 
men, and that they were allowed only one hour to prepare 
to die. They received the tidings with that calmness which 
characterizes the Indian in such circumstances, and many 
of thein employed their last hour in silence and prayer. 
At the expiration of the hour, a party of the white men ap- 
proached, and firing in through crevices made in the house, 
slaughtered, as they supposed, the entire company. One 
only escaped to tell the tale of horror. A youth had by 
some means forced himself down into the cavity beneath 
the floor, where he lay undiscovered until the shades of 
evening gave him opportunity to escape to the woods, and 
bear the fearful tidings of the massacre to the rest of his 
tribe at Sandusky. 

On Monday morning we visited with the Moravian pas- 
tor the spot where the Indian village had stood. The area 
is now overgrown by wild plum trees ; and in the center 
there is a cavity which was once the cellar of the store- 
house in which the Indians were slaughtered, and which is 
the only vestige now remaining of their former village. 
From this cavity, which was once flooded with the blood of 
the Indians, there now rises (1833) a tall sycamore tree, 
and around its trunk and branches a heavy vine climbs, 
and spreads itself far above the surrounding woods. 

We left the scene and the excellent man who had been 
our companion, with strong impressions upon our minds. 
As we rode away those impressions were embodied in the 
following stanza : — 

8* 



178 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. 



I. 

Throw up thine arms, thou s}'cai'nore tree, 
For rich is the soil that nourishes thee; 
And the vine that chmbs round thy branches high, 
Should yield its clusters of rubric dye; 
For the earth which the fostering juice imparts 
Is drench'd in the blood of the red men's hearts. 

II. 
'Tis a strange, wild tale that they tell of thee — 
Thou clambering vine and sycamore tree; 
They say that in time, long past and gone. 
The red men rov'd in these wilds alone; — 
That here, in the midst of this circling wood. 
In the days of eld, a village stood 
Where the warrior Indian, wild and free, 
Rejoic'd in primeval jubilee. 

III. 

A man of God, from the rising sun, 
Came to Gnadenhiitten and Shonbrunn ; 
And he taught the Indians to love the name 
Of Him who on errands of mercy came: — 
They heard his talk with rev' rent fear. 
And leaned on their bows around to hear; 
Then buried the hatchet, and tilled the sod. 
And bow'd to worship the white man's God. 



MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. 1 79 

IV. 

Thus fiar in the wilderness' solitude, 
Midst the tall old trees, and tlie mountains rude, 
In prayers and praises, the ancient race 
Lifted their hearts to the God of grace. 

V. 

But cruel war seized his flaming brand, 
And shook at heaven his bloody hand; 
And the warrior Indian seized the bow 
And lurk'd like the panther for his foe; 
But the Christian Indians would not sing 
The song of war in their council ring — 
Yet Suspicion whisper'd the Christians prayed 
And plann'd for their warrior brothers' aid. 

VL 

'Twas Autumn, when Ceres fills her horn 
With the ripen'd ears of the golden corn. 
When a band of pale-faced warriors came 
With words of peace, in the Christian's name, 
But their words of peace were spoke in guile. 
With a " forked tongue " and a syren's smile. 

vn. 

At even, about the close of day, 
They took the Indians' arms away; 
And they gathered them in that sacred place 
Which their hands had rear'd for prayer and praise. 



iSo MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. 

Then told their doom, as History saitli, 
Indians — an hour! — then meet your death! 

VIIL 

'Tvvas fearful tidings — the red men stood, 
In the pride of their race, in solemn mood; 
But their cheeks hlanch'd not, nor a quicken'd breath 
Betray'd the fear of approaching death — 
All kneel'd in silence and rais'd their eyes 
To the God that heard their suppliant cries. 

IX. 

An hour elapsed — The white men came 
And with deadly rifle took deadly aim, 
And they rent the breasts of the Indians there. 
As they kneeled and lifted their hearts in prayer. 

X. 

Now far in the West the Indian sire, 
As he sits by his wigwam's flickering fire, 
Oft tells the tale of what things were done 
At Gnadenhutten and Shonbrunn. 





HYMNS AND SACRED PIECES. 



LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. 



Expressive of heart-exercises during a season of refrcsliing, while minis- 
lering to tlie Tliird Presbyterian Cliurcli, Cincinnati, Ohio. 



There is a joy, all joys above — 
An inward life of peace and love, 

The contrite only feel; 
It is the power that makes us whole — 
A holy unction in the soul ; 

It is the Spirit's seal. 

There is a ray of holy light, 

A radiance from the Ever-Bright 

And Ever-Blessed One — 
It is the day-spring in the heart. 
That lives and glows in ev'ry part, 

It is the Spirit's sun. 



l82 HYMNS AND SACRED PIECES. 

There is an energy supplied 
By faith in Christ the crucified, 

Tln-ough all the being rife; 
It is the power of saving grace 
That holds the soul in its embrace, 

It is the Sj^irit's life. 



THE SPIRIT LAND. 

[after van SiALIS.] 

Into the silent spirit land, 

Oh, who will guide us there — 

The white-rob'd angels — hand in hand, 

Float in the radiant air. 

O land — the silent land — 

Who, who will guide us there? 

Into the solemn spirit land — 
The dead have pass'd, and we 

Approach each day the viewless strand 
Of vast eternity — 

Oh land — the solemn land. 
We 're passing unto thee. 

Into the peaceful spirit land 
My soul prepare to go ; 



HYMNS AND SACRED PIFXES. I S3 

The air by angel wings is fann'd — 

Its glories who may know? — • 
Oh land, — the peaceful land : — 

My soul prepaie to go. 

O land of love, the heav'nly land, 

My Saviour dwells in thee: — 
Around His throne redeem'd ones stand, 

All clothed in purity — 
Oh land ! — the heav'nly land — 

Dear Saviour — think of me! 



THE VALE OF HUMILITY. 

Air — Lilly Dale, 

In the gospel-day, on the Christian's way 

To the land of the pure and the blest. 
That his strength may not fail, he passeth a vale 
Where travelers love to rest. 
Chorus. Peaceful valley — lowly valley. 
Vale of rich, free grace, 
, The Sinner's Friend doth condescend 
To walk in that lowly place. 

There Sharon's rose in fragrance blows. 
And the pure white lily springs; 



184 HYMNS AND SACRED PIECES. 

And the peaceful Dove, from the Land of Love, 
Cometh down on snow-white wings. 

Tranquil and slow a stream doth flow 
Through that lowly — lovely vale, 

And the pilgrims drink at the flow'ry brink 
Of the fount that ne'er can fail. 

In that calm retreat sojourners meet 
With One whom their souls adore. 

And He guides their way, till at close of day 
They stand on the Shining Shore. 

The white-wing'd Dove is the S2:>irit of Love; 

Tlie stream is the Fountain of Grace; 
And the Sinner's Friend doth condescend 

To walk in that lowly j)lace. 



AGGRESSIVE WAR. 

The deeds of dire aggressive war, 
Its lust, and blasphemy, and blood, 

Hell's minions scent them from afar. 
And rush to mar the works of God. 

Famine and rapine, fire and sword, 
And groans and strife are in the train 



HYMNS AND SACRED PIECES. 1S5 

Of these apostates from the Lord, 
Self-seeking chiefs and reckless men. 

The widow's wail — the orphan's sigh — 

The parent's agony and tears, 
Will call down judgments from on high, 

From Him who hears the widow's prayers. 

And ye who laud the men of strife. 
Who war for power, and not for right, 

The God wlio gave His creatures life, 
Will hold you guilty in His sight. 



MINISTERING SPIRITS. 

'Tis a beautiful thought, that by night and by day 

The angels of mercy are near; 
They allure us from sin and from danger away. 

In joy and in sorrow they're here. 

They stand in the presence of Infinite Love, 
They descend through the fields of the air. 

Where saints are departing they bear them above, 
Where souls are I'epenting — they're there. 

We will cherish the faith that pure beings on high 
Kind thoughts upon mortals bestow, 



l86 HYMNS AND SACRED PIECES. 

And in hours of temptation are lingering nigh 
To the lov'd ones that sojourn below. 

They will watch o'er our way till life's struggles are past, 

Till the heavenly city's in view; 
We shall share in their joys and their worship at last, 

And unite in their ministry too. 



LOVE AND LABOR. 

" Go labor " — is the sovereign word 
To all disciples of the Lord ; 
And he that loveth will fulfill 
With zeal and joy the Master's will. 

We only honor Jesus when 
We labor for the good of men; 
Truth works by love and purifies 
The heart that human want supplies. 

Follow the Saviour — oh my soul, 
Let light and love thy life control; 
That love which sees the Saviour's face 
In all the needy of our race. 



HYMNS AND SACRED PIECES. iSji 



THE PIONEER CHURCH. 

During our residence in Chicago — 1848-9 — in addition 
to the labor of estabhshing the first religious newspaper in 
the Northwest, and a depository for Sabbath-school books 
and tracts, I was one of a company of Christians who 
established the Third Presbyterian Church on the west side 
of the city. The frame building which we erected, still 
stands on Union street. In this pioneer church I preached 
the gospel to increasing numbers until I left the city. Soon 
after, the congregation divided into the Third Presbyterian 
and First Congregational churches. These, in their great 
prosperity — with the exception of a very few old members 
still surviving — probably know nothing of the origin of 
the Presbyterian and Congregational churches on the West- 
side. This little nucleus has now, we are told by an old 
member, expanded into seven churches, five of them 
chapels or colonies of the Third Presbyterian and First Con- 
gregational churches. 

The following hymn was written for the opening service, 
and sung by the new choir. It was not among my papers, 
but strange to tell, after twenty-two years it is recollected 
by Mrs. Dr. Griswold, of Chicago, who was then a young 
lady in the audience. We fear tunes rather than hymns 
would be recollected by persons attending service in our 
churches at the present time. • 

Mrs. G. has reproduced the hymn, adding what she 
could not remember distinctly. 

HYMN 

Sung at the dedication of the Third Prefebyterian Church, Chicago. 
[Tune — The Chayici. J 

Rejoice ye! Rejoice ye! His goodness record; 
In the beauty of holiness worbhip the Lord; 



lS8 HYMNS AND SACRED PIECES. 

To the God of Sabaoth this temple we rear; 
We bow at His altar — we worship Him here. 

Hallelujah! Hallelujah! our Saviour and King! 
The sweet incense of gratitude hither we bring; 
We trust in Thy merits — we rest on Thy word; 
Through Thy high intercession Thy servants are heard. 

Descend Thou — descend Thou — O heavenly Dove! 
From Thy high place of rest in the bosom of Love; 
Here descend on Thy servants, beget in the mind 
Devotion to God, and true love to mankind. 

Awaken, awaken, oh Zion, and sing 
His praises forever — thine Infinite King; 
Rejoice in His mercy, and trust in His word. 
In the beauty of holiness worship the Lord. 



•KEEP THYSELF PURE." 

Christian, keep thy heart with care, 
Pure from each coi'rupting thought, 
Christ lias placed a life-spring there, 
Watch the fountain — taint it not. 

Erring Fancy often strays, 
Tarries with forbidden things, 



HYMNS AND SACRED PIECES. 189 

Lured by sense and sin away, 
Soils the wliiteness of lier wings. 

Keep thyself by tiuth and love, 
Soul nor body e'er deface; 
Sinful habits ever prove 
Hindrances to growth in grace. 

Christ was pure, and thou should ne'er 
Breath, nor taste, nor lip defile; 
Shall the tongue that utters prayer 
Nauseous be with taint the while. 

Of His body form a part, 
Join the blood-washed company, 
Strive in person, lip, and heart, 
Pure, as He is pure, to be. 



THE CHRISTIAN WARRIOR. 

A Psalm sung in connection with a funeral service, in memory of Rev. 
Edward Smith, candidate of tlic Liberty Party for Governor of Ohio, 
and one of the first and most heroic of the anti-slavery ministers of the 
West. 

A PSALM. 

Armed as a soldier of the Cross, 
In the hottest of the fight, 



190 HYMNS AND SACRED PIECES. 

Our brother stood the champion 
Of humanity and right. 

The banner of the bleeding Lamb 

Still waving o'er his head, 
The sacramental host of Christ 

Into the fight he led. 

His voice was heard along our lines, 
When others fought and fell, 

" Courage!" he cried, and led the charge 
Right through the hosts of hell. 

Vice felt his power; and slavery rag'd 
And gnashed her teeth in spite, 

As strong of soul, he flashed the truth 
Into her realm of night. 

Fainting, yet pressing on the foe. 
And marked with many a wound, 

Unconquered, and unconq'rable, 
He sank upon the ground. 

Our tears were shed, but not for him, 
The faith of Christ he kept; 

Our cause had lost a leader tried, 
And for ourselves we wept. 



HYMNS AND SACRED I'lECES. 191 



ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF LINCOLN. 



Sung at tlie conclusion of a discourse at Bcnzonia, Midi., conimcniora» 
live of the sad event. 



[Old Tune of " Norway," Minor. '\ 
I. 

Mourn, oh my country, mourn in deepest anguish, 
The joy of tliy triumph is sanctified by sorrow, 
On Liberty's altar a martyr heart is ofter'd, 

Lincohi has fallen! 
II 
Let all the people mourn in deep submission, 
Abraham the honest — chosen of the nation — 
Fell when our country — triumphing o'er treason, 

Mourns his departure. 
III. 
But the assassin — red with cruel murder. 
What will his doom be? — what his guilty terror, 
When God commands him, cover'd with transgression 

Up to the judgment. 

IV. 

God of our fathers, hear our supplication, 
Guide the Republic in this solemn crisis. 
Until foul treason — banished from the nation. 

Sinks into darkness — deep and eternal! 



193 



HYMNS AND SACRED PIECES. 



God save the nation! Father, Son, and Spirit 
Send forth the gospel of Freedom and Sah'ation, 
For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory 
For ever and ever — and ever and ever. 





HUMOROUS AND JUVENILE. 



ADDRESS 



Before the Richland County Agricultural Society, published in Ohio State 

Report, 1S56. 



Mr. President, Farmers, and Fellow-Citizens : 

Three years ago this society gave me credentials, as one 
of their number, to visit the agriculturar fair of Great 
Britain, and to report to them such facts as I might think 
of vaUie. While abro.ad I spent time and money to make 
myself conversant with the state of agriculture in Europe ; 
and with the moral and temporal condition of the laborers 
of the Old World. In England I spent some time in the 
best agricultural regions of Sussex, mostly with the Robin- 
sons, a family of Friends, who are large farmers in that 
part of the kingdom. The Orthodox Quakers, or Friends, 
according to their number, are the best population of Great 
Britain, and if they had rational means of disseminating 
their tenents, and were willing to abate some of their pecu- 
liarities, they would be the best exponents of the religion 
of Christ. 

I will only add a few words, of a general character, as 
introductory to the agricultural poem which you have in- 



194 HUMOROUS AND JUVENILE. 

vited me to deliver on the present occasion. I have seen no 
reason to modify any of the opinions presented in my pre- 
vious address to this society. 

There are some things in England better than we have 
them here — there are others in this country better than 
they are there. The advantages there are mainly in favor 
of those who have means. Here they are in favor of the 
laborer. 

Men of means, who seek merely the pleasure and com- 
forts of life, can live more at their ease in the old countries 
than in the new ; but here, any industrious laborer, who 
has good health, may rise to independence, and he may 
hope that his children may rise to opulence and influence 
in the State. Look, for instance, at the history of the pres- 
ent candidates for the Chief Magistracy of the Union. 
James Buchanan, late Minister to England, is the son of a 
farmer. John C. Fremont is the son of a poor widow. He 
has procured his own education, and achieved his own for- 
tune and fame. Millard Fillmore is a cloth-dresser by 
trade, and has by labor and study filled some of the chief 
places in the country. This is the distinguishing advantage 
of American institutions. Our system of government, in 
the free States, educates all the people, and gives all an 
equal chance to rise to places of influence and trust. Take 
an example in humble life. I mention it only to awaken 
interest and enterprise in the minds of many youth I see 
about me. I was the son of a widow, and began life with- 
out a dollar. I have labored on a farm — spent four years 
in a printing office — studied law one year — studied four 
years in college, and one and a half in a Theological Semi- 
nary — I have paid every dollar which my education cost 
me, by my own hard labor of mind and body ; and in ad- 
dition, I had obtained, before I began my ministry, and 
when I was not forty years of age, means which will, with 
the Divine blessing, enable me to be useful to others in life 
and after death. I have likewise established two book 
stores, and three religious newspapers, besides preaching 
the Gospel fifteen years, sometimes at my own expense. 



HUMOROUS AND JUVENILE. I95 

Now, this is a humble example, but it shows what boys 
that begin with nothing in tliis country can do for them- 
selves and for the moral interests of the world. Don't be 
afraid or ashamed to work. Every youth that is before me, 
if he will be industrious, enterprising, and energetic, can do 
well for himself and good for his fellow-men. This is the 
great benefit and blessing of American institutions com- 
pared with those of the parent country. Here every man 
may achieve for himself all that his natural endowments 
will allow. Look into your own county and into your own 
county town. Your leading farmers, your judges, your 
merchants, are all self-made men. In this country there 
can be no envy between classes in society — between the 
rich and the poor. Those who are poor one year may be 
rich the next, and those who lived without office, yet their 
children may rule the State, and will be more likely to do 
so than the children of our more favored families. When 
our institutions give all an equal chance, those who, by 
honest effort, pursue honest labors, whether they succeed 
as others do or not, should be equally honored. 

There are some things in the old countries against which 
we should guard at home. In Great Britain the salaries of 
public officers are excessively high. This adds to the in- 
fluence of office, and is liable to beget corruption in the 
officer, and subserviency in the people. Let the farmers 
look to this. They are now, and I hope always will be, 
the conservative masses. Each political party accuses the 
other of endeavoring to raise salaries, and to some extent 
all are guilty. Although some are honest and patriotic in 
all parties : all parties have men of a different character. 
As it is in Great Britain, so it may be here : — unawares, 
and by various manoeuvres, power will steal from the many 
to the few, and salaries will be raised, until power and cor- 
ruption will become too strong for the moral sense and 
prosperity of the people. 

Every increase in the salary of a public servant, usually 
separates him more and more from the masses of the 
people — adds the means of dissipation, and subtracts from 
his moral principle. 



196 HUMOROUS AND JUVENILE. 

In another respect the farmers must be the conservators 
of our national prosperity. Removed from the excitements 
and temptations of town Hfe, they are in better circum- 
stances for moral reflection and improvement. In the 
moral character and the intelligence of the masses is our 
hope. Ignorant and wicked men can be, and will be, 
deceived by their leaders. They will adhere to party, right 
or wrong ! and if our happy institutions are ever damaged, 
this will be the point of danger. 

The young men of the country are corrupted, if cor- 
rupted at all, in the cities and villages, where dealers in 
pohtics and ardent spirits make a prey of them. If it were 
not for the conservative influence of the farming popula- 
tion, and religious men generally, this country would go 
backward and downward. As you value, then, the benefi- 
cent institutions under which you live — as you value the 
peace and prosperity of your posterity hereafter — labor to 
promote general education, and piety that produces con- 
science among all classes of our people. 

I will now recite the poem, and as you will hear, " there 
is more truth than poetry in it." It is designed not only 
for the edification, but for the exhilaration of those present. 



Farmers' Wives — Sons — Daughters: 

They 've appointed me to talk to you in poetry to-day, 
Now, Farmers, step up to the stand and hear what I've 

to say, 
To hear a speech in poetry at least is something new; 
I'll make the speech, and you may judge if what I say 

be true. 
And now I beg you not to think that I don't understand 
How Farmers ought to manage stock, and cultivate 
their land — 



HUMOROUS AND JUVENILE. IC)*J 

Because I do — In early years I "fiirmed it" — as they 

say,— 
Droi^jo'd corn, and pick'd potatoes, and helped to make 

the hay; 
And from my old grandfather, I learned a thing or two, 
And now, if you'll attend to me, I'll " tell that same " 

to you. 

And friends, remember, Farmers are sometimes a little 

mulish, 
They think they know it all tliemselves, and that book 

learning's foolish. 
'Tis true, I own, experience is still the best of teachers; 
But then the most experienced are those who pay the 

preachers. 
And if I preach to you to-day, some facts that are of 

value, 
Of course you '11 inwai"dly digest the things I have to 

tell you; 
And Jirst — be sure yqu have a plan, and have a place 

for all things; 
And calculate your ways and means, for Uirge things 

and for small things; 
For those who work but have no plan, and little calcu- 
lation. 
Will neither work their fortune out, nor work out their 

salvation. 



1^8 HUMOROUS AND JUVENILE. 

Some people work, and fuss, and strive, and then can 

scarcely live, 
And wonder why their neighbors have enough to spend 

and give. 
The reason is they calculate, and make ends meet, and 

more, 
While folks witli larger farms, still owe a " leetlc " at 

the store. 
Then have a plan about your farm — your crops — 

your hogs — your cattle, 
Work isn't all — to calculate is fully half the battle. 

Speaking of cattle — get good breeds, they'll pay you 

for their keeping. 
Bad breeds will eat their heads off twice, and then not 

be done eating. 
Some Farmers' hogs are head and ears ; — for feed the 

corn is taken, 
They turn it into skin and bones, and thus they lose 

their bacon. 

Some folks keep sheep — the more they 're fed the less 

their wool increases. 
Then scold about the price they get for coarse and 

scanty fleeces : — 
Don't buy sorrel horses with white feet, nor cows with 

a bull's head, 



HUMOROUS AND JUVENILE. 199 

Nor think that extra bi-eeds will keep unless they 're 

extra fed. 
Some starve their cows in winter time, in spring they 

starve the calf, 
Then wonder that their stock 's so poor — 'twould make 

a donkey laugh. 
Give your stock shelter and a bed — keep young calves 

with their dam, 
And if you do not change your flock, be sure you 

change your " Sam." 
Some folk believe in signs, and some believe that cheat 
Is something else besides the cross of certain weeds 

with wheat. 
Plant when the sprouts, from sun and moon, will have 

the greatest light. 
Then, if the ground be well prepared, your crops will 

come out right. 

Manure is gold — the man who wastes what will 

enrich the soil. 
Is wise as she who saves the salt and lets the butter spoil. 
Plow deep, if you would see good corn and heavy root 

crops growing, . 
A loose sub soil will stand a stretch, but hard soils need 

deep plowing; 
Manure your fields — around your trees put ashes, suds, 

and lye. 



200 HUMOROUS AND JUVENILE. 

And when the fly 's about, plant corn — sow clover, 

oats, and rye. 
Learn to make cheese — to graft fruit trees; and don't 

be such a fool 
As to suppose that a good sire gets always a good foal. 
Plant pear trees in a good clay soil — peaches on loamy 

hills; 
Don't get in debt, and then complain of the store- 
keeper's bills; 
Don't starve yourselves — a good beef-steak or turkey 

will go down 
With country people just as well as with the folks in 

town ; 
Use good fresh milk, and good brown flour, the coarse 

bran sifted out ; 
Pickles and soothing syrups give to hogs, if diey 're 

about. 
Don't drink your coffee strong — eat pork but little in 

your lives; 
All pork is scrofulous — strong tea gives nerve tremors 

to your wives. 

Speaking of xvives — good farmers' dames, a word or 

two to you. 
To each one in particular, of whom my words are true; 
Some women churn, and churn, and churn, and make 

an awful flutter, 



HUMOROUS AND JUVENILE. 20I 

And then they spoil the whole affair, and leave milk in 

the butter. 
Some people on a washing day are surly as a bear; 
But some forget to wash their hands, and some to comb 

their han". 
Some folks can see their neighbors' faults, but nothing 

in the heads 
Of their own children — and forget annoyances in beds. 
Some women scold because they ought — their hus- 
bands are so dull, 
The idle drones will saunter round, till children go to 

school ; 
Such women have a right to scold — such men are lazy 

coots, 
Their wives should make them take the broom, and 

they should take the boots. 

Toung men who want to get a wife — I'll just give you 

a hint. 
For a good wife is the pure gold — and often a gold 

mint: 
Don't let the damsel know when you expect to go a 

courtin'. 
For then, if she 's a mind for you, she '11 be fixed up for 

certain ; 
Just happen in, as 'twere by chance, then if she makes 

a bother, 
9* 



202 HUMOIiOUS AND JUVENILE, 

Has dirty hands, and dirty dress, and is unkind to 
mother : 

Flee for your life — don't look behind — run like a 
frightened mortal. 

Who fished for trout, and got a bite by a huge snap- 
ping turtle. 

Don't choose a wife in the ball-room, such women 
dance with skill, 

And dress, and smile to please the crowd — while hus- 
bands pay the bill. 

If one looks tidy at her work — smiles while she makes 
good butter. 

Just intimate you'll call again: — the sooner it's done 
the better. 

Don't look for one with flashing dress, and pinched up 
in the middle. 

Both soul and body — ere she's old — will be like a 
cracked fiddle. 

Don't marry girls with baby hands and little Chinese 
feet. 

Their hearts are little as their hands, cosmetics make 
them sweet. 

Leave such fair maids to the town boys, who have more 
time and skill 

To play with pictures, and foot up the shop and doctor's 
bill. 



HUMOROUS AND JUVENILE. 203 

Avoid the girl who slights her work and grumbles :it 

her labors, 
Who 's sour and dull when she 's at home, and smart 

when at the neighbors. 

Mr. President — I pity him who getteth such a wife, 

sir, 
For, like a jackass, he 's hitched up to a hard load for 

life, sir. 
But virtue and good temper shine, like sunlight in dull 

weather, 
Find such a one — and I know who can tie you fast 

together. 

And farmers^ girls^ a word to you : — a word you ought 

to hear, 
I would not let all sorts of fools put soft soap in my ear; 
There are some scamps that dress, and talk, and seem 

genteel and civil. 
But for a husband they would make the next thing to 

the devil. 
Never despise a man of sense, though home-spun is 

his way; 
If he's embarrassed, help him out with what he's got 

to say; 
And if the question he would ask — but fears — and 

you " diskiver ! " 



204 HUMOROUS AND JUVENILE. 

That the hard word sticks in his throat, and makes his 

chin to quiver, 
Then help him out, for mercy's sake, and when the 

thing is over, 
You '11 find there 's grit in many a man that was a bash- 
ful lover. 
But swearing, drinking, idle fools, who lie and chew 

the weed, 
Who spend whole hours in low saloons, are of satanic 

breed. 
Avoid them as you would the , don't have the 

scamps about, 
If they step in — leave mother there, and you can just 

step out. 

JVotv, in co7zclusion, let me add a word by way of morals. 
Keep up your fences, and keep out of other people's 

quarrels. 
Never decieve a child ; to fret and scold will do no good. 
To strike their heads, and call low names, will make a 

grov'ling brood. 
Govern by reason if you can ; — if you must take the 

rod. 
Be kind and firm, or else your child is lost to you and 

God. 
Make youngsters work, but don't forget to let them 

learn to sing; 



HUMOROUS AND JUVENILE. 205 

Amusements they should often have, and music 's just 

the thing. 
Don't covet to be rich, but seek for comfort and good 

taste ; 
Some folks can live and thrive upon what other people 

waste. 
Don't go to sleep on Sabbath days, nor saunter round 

the farm, 
But go to church, as Christians should, and keep your 

souls from harm. 

Keep regular hours — the wise and good live mostly in 

the light. 
While vice, and crime, and fashion hold their orgies in 

the night. 
Avoid the man who always pleads for party, right or 

wrong, 
Whether a lawyer, or a priest, he '11 make your fetters 

strong. 
Be kind to horses — noise and blows will only make 

them worse; 
The man 's a brute who swears, and beats, and over- 
loads his horse. 
Don't beat your steers — keep wood on hand — be 

early home for dinner; 
Be free from debt, and party-hacks — repent if you're 

a sinner. 



206 HUMOROUS AND JUVENILE. 

Be true to conscience, stand for right, and keep your 
wife good natur'd 

And then posterity will be bright-eyed, and pleasant- 
featured. 



ON RECEIVING A FAVOR FROM A 
FAVORITE. 

My love, the gift yon gave me, 

Has bound me with a spell. 
As pleasing as the witcheries 

Of which old fables tell. 

Thy loveliness subdues me — 

Thy tender sighs I hear — 
And the whispers of thy gentle voice 

Are murmuring in my ear. 

There is a charm about thee 

Of modesty and youth ; 
There is a meaning in thine eyes 

Of constancy and truth; 

And I'd sooner trust thy single vow 
Than all the pi^ayers that's said 

At Brahma's shrine, or Mecca's tomb — 
My own delicious maid. 



HUMOROUS AND JUVENILE. 207 



[For tlie Philadelphia " Evening Post," 1824. J 

From the Country. 
Having a good deal of work to do about the farm lately, 
clearing up some new land, and grubbing out a piece for. a 
potato patch, I hung my fiddle on the branch of a beech 
tree. Being out hunting the steers last week, I came across 
the instrument and brought it home with me. Looking 
over the " Post" this morning, and seeing some verses to 
Lorenzo from Isadore, I immediately was delivered of the 
following response : 



TO ISADORE. 

O Isadore, lo\eliest, come to me, 
And we'll sit in the shade of our great elm tree, 
And we'll list to the mocking bird's varied song, 
At the hour of noontide. — Come, Is' — come along! 

Or come when the sinking god of day 
Has dappled the clouds with a lambent ray, 
And we'll sit till the shadows of night pervade 
And spreads o'er the woodlands a mantle of shade. 

Or come when Luna, pale queen of the night, 
And the crystallized dew shall give thee light; 
'Tis elysian pastime to spend an hour 
By moonlight, and dewlight, alone, in our bower, 

Or come when your cheek is all in a glow, 
Like fervid wine bedropp'd in th' snow, 



308 HUMOROUS AND JUVENILE. 

And hold your breath, lest Zephyrus should sip 
The honeyed dew from your balmy lip. 

Come — no matter when — by day or by night, 
With a throbbing pulse and an eye of light, 
You may rest your head on Lorenzo's breast, 
And I'll smooth your hair till your heart's at rest. 



QUARRELS INJURE BOTH PARTIES. 

THE KILKENNY CATS EXPANDED. 

Written on demand of our little adopted son, Bennic, who required some- 
thing amusing to be recited at the close of his term in school. 

There were two Thomas Cats in Kilkenny, 
And each thought there was one cat too many; 
So they fix'd on a day when they'd have an aflray. 
And decide which should rule in Kilkenny. 

'Twas a horrible sight to see those cats fight : — 
With a spring and a cry they made the fur fly; 
And they scratched and they bit, and they squall'd and 

they fit — 
And they ripp'd and they tore, both behind and before, 
Till instead of two cats there wasn't any ! 



HUMOROUS AND JUVENILE. 209 

— They each eat the other because they were males, 

And nothing was left but the tips of two tails, 

* * * * * * 

Boys — This is the moral |^^ Keep out of a quarrel. 



BALLAD AND CATCH. 

Sung byEmma L. Walker at the Monthly Literary Evening, Benzonia, 
April, 1S6S. 

" IT DEPENDS ON THE PERSON." 

[Tune — Annie Laurie i\ 

Young people of Benzonia, 

I'll sing a song for you ; 
A song of home and duty, 

Which will be something new — 
I'll sing of life and hope. 

Of hearts all kind and true; 
And tell you how by kindness 

To draw such hearts to you. 

The maidens of Benzonia 

Will promise to be true; 
They '11 live and love and labor 

In good and ill for you : 



2IO HUMOROUS AND JUVENILE. 

— But then, will you be true? — 
Can we trust all to you? — 

Young people of Benzonia, 
Will ye be kind and true? 

'Tis said that some are faithless, 

They vow and then forsake; 
And wickedly and falsely, 

Leave trusting hearts to break — 
Oh friends, be kind and true, 

And heaven will smile on you — 
Young folks of dear Benzonia, 

Be always kind and true. 

CATCH. 

Two Toimg Men. 

Yes; we'll be kind and true, 
In weal and woe, to you. 

Emma — sharply. 

But I did not mean you — 
No, neither of you two. 

Toung Men — sharply. 

Neither did we mean you — 
You awful buir-a-boo! 



HUMOROUS AND JUVENILE. 

Emma. 
You Yankee-doodle-doo. 



211 



£oth at once. 

Men. You awful bug-a-boo. 
Emma. You Yankee-doodle-doo. 

Altogether., facing the Audience. 

Young friends of dear Benzonia, 
Be always kind and true. 




INDEX. 



Immortality and Worth of the Soul, 
Ten Scenes in the Life of a Lady of Fashion, 
The Swan on Lake Leman, . . - - 

The Honey-Moon in a Western Cottage. A Pastoral, 
Apostrophe to the Divine Heart, ... 



PAGE. 
9 

54 

• 107 

112 

- iiS 



Our Children: 
Liltle James — New Richmond, 
Lines by Mrs. Walker, 
Maggie, . . - . 

Rhoda, 
Blind Phoebe, ... 



131 

1 25 
129 
133 
141 



Miscellaneous Pieces: 




To My Wife, ...... 


- 144 


Tribute to a Departed Mother, .... 


147 


Traveler on the Mountain, .... 


- 149 


Lines — in Memory of a Deaf Girl, . . . 


151 


Ancient Egypt, ..... 


■ "54 


The Serenade, ...... 


. 156 


Musical Surprise, ..... 


.- 157 


Conrad and Ellen, ..... 


159 


The Angel Whisper, .... 


■ 163 


A Tear for Hugh Miller, .... 


164 


On Relinquishing Legal Studies, ... 


- 165 


Charles B. Storrs, ..... 


.165 


John Q_ Adams, ..... 


- .67 



214 INDEX. 

A Sonnet — Brinkcrhoff, - - . . . . i6S 

Washington Irving, • - -„- . - - i6S 

Jabcz Burns, D.D., London --.... 1O9 

Gnadenhiitten - --..... ly^ 

Hymns and Sacred Pieces: 

Life of the Spirit, • ...... iSi 

The Spirit Land, ... ..... 1S2 

The Vale of Humility, .-..-.. 183 

Aggressive War, ........ 1S4 

Ministering Spirits, ....... 1S5 

Love and Labor, ........ jS6 

The Pioneer Church, - - . . ... -187, 

Keep Thyself Pure, - iSS 

Rtv. Edward Smith, ....... 189 

Elegy — The Death of Lincoln, . • . - • - 191 

Humorous and Juvenile : 

Agricultural Address, ....... 195 

On Receiving a Favor from a Favorite - • • • 206 

To Isadore, ......... 207 

The Kilkenny Cats, 208 

Ballad and Catch, - 209 



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